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A Short History 
of Spain 

Mary Platt Parmele 



SECOND OOPY, 




LiBRARY^F^ONGRESS. 

*^'''aP- Copyright No.. 

Shelf..:?iia. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 



BY THE SAME /fUTMOR 



A SHORT HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND 

A SHORT -HISTORY OF FRANCE 

A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY 

A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN 



Each t2mo. 60 cents mt 



A SHORT 



HISTORY OF SPAIN 



MARY PLATT PAEMELE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1898 



1 






27366 



Copyright, 1898. by 
MAKY PLATT PARMELE 



Copyright, SS, by 
CHARLES SCEIBNER'S SONS 

TWO COPIES iRScmVEO, 



.IftPil 11899 




>C\%\3 



^ n r\ 



PREFACE. 

In presenting this book to the public the 
author can only reiterate what she has already 
said in works of a similar kind: that she has 
tried to exclude the mass of confusing details 
which often make the reading of history a 
dreary task; and to keep closely to those facts 
which are vital to the unfolding of the narra- 
tive. This is done under a strong conviction 
that the essential facts in history are those 
which reveal and explain the development of 
a nation, rather than the incidents, more or 
less entertaining, which have attended such 
development. And also under another con- 
viction: that a little, thoroughly compre- 
hended, is better than much imperfectly 
remembered and understood. 

M. P. P. 

New York. Jung is, 1898. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Ancient Iberia — The Basques — The Keltiberians — 
The Phenicians — Cadiz Founded, . . . i 

CHAPTER n. 

Struggle between Phenicians and Assyrians — 
Founding of Carthage — Decline of Phenicia — 
Rise of Roman Power— First Punic War, 9 

CHAPTER III. 

Hamilcar — Hannibal — Siege and Fall of Saguntum 
— Rome Invades Spain— Scipio's Policy — Cadiz, 
(Gades) Surrendered to the Romans — By What 
Steps Iberia Became Spain — Fall of Carthagin- 
ian Power — How Spain Became a Roman 
Province 15 

CHAPTER IV. 

Sertorius — Story of the White Hind — Rome Fights 
Her Own Battles on Spanish Soil— Battle of 
Munda — Csesar Declared Dictator — The Ides of 
March — Octavius Augustus — Spain Latinized — 
Four Hundred Years of Peace, . . . .24 



VUl CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

PAQS 

Northern Races in the History of Civilization — 
Roman Empire Expiring— A taulf us— Attila and 
the Huns — Theodoric — Evaric Completes Con- 
quest of Spanish Peninsula— Europe Teuton- 
ized — Difference between Anglo-Saxon and 
Latin Races 30 

CHAPTER VI. 

Ulfilas— Arianism— The Spanish Language— Brun- 
hilde— Leovigild— His Son's Apostasy— Arian- 
ism Ceases to be the Established Religion of 
Spain, 39 

CHAPTER VII. 
Toledo—Church of Santa Maria— Wamba, . 45 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Decline of Visigoths — Roderick — Count Julian's 
Treachery — Mahommedanism — Tarif — Proph- 
ecy Found in the Enchanted Tower — Tarik — 
Roderick's Defeat and Death— Moslem Empire 
Established in Spain, 50 

CHAPTER IX. 

Musa's Dream of European Conquest— Charles Mar- 
tel— Characteristics of Mahommedan Rule — 
Mission of the Saracen in Europe — The Germ 
of a Christian Kingdom in the North of 
Spain, 58 



CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Pelayo and the Cave of Covadonga — Alfonso I. — 
Berbers and Arabs at War on African Coast — 
War Extends to Spain — The Omeyyad Khalifs 
Superseded by the Abbasides — Abd-er-Rah- 
man — Omeyyad Dynasty Established at Cor- 
dova — Ineffectual Attempt of the Abbasides to 
Overthrow Abd-er-Rahman — Character of This 
Conqueror, 64 

CHAPTER XI. 
Charlemagne — Battle of Roncesvalles, . . .69 

CHAPTER XII. 

Conditions after Death of Abd-er-Rahman — Abd- 
er-Rahman II. — Arab Refinements — Eulogius 
and the Christian Martyrs — Abd-er-Rahman 
III.~A Khalifate at Cordova— The Great 
Mosque — The City of "The Fairest" — Death 
of Abd-er-Rahman III. ...... 72 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Rough Cradle of a Spanish Nationality in the 
Asturias — Alfonso III. and His Hidalgos and 
Dons — Guerrilla Warfare with Moors — Jeal- 
ousies and Strife between Christian Kingdoms — 
Civil War — Almanzor — Ruin of Christian State 
Seemed Imminent — Death of Almanzor — Berber 
Revolt — Anarchy in Moorish State — A Khalif 
Begging a Crust of Bread — Berbers Destroy Cor- 
dova — Library Burned — City of ' ' The Fairest " 
a Ruin — Asturias — Leon and Castile United — 
Alfonso VI.— The Cid— Triumph of Christians— 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Moors Ask Aid of the Alraoravides — Christians 
Driven Back— Death of the Cid— A Dynasty of 
the Almoravides— The Alhomades— The Great 
Mahdi — Moorish People Become Subject to 
Emperor of Morocco — His Designs upon 
Europe—The Pope Proclaims a Crusade— 
Alhomades Driven Out of Spain by Christians 
— Moorish Kingdom Reduced to Province of 
Granada, 78 

CHAPTER XIV. 

European Conditions in Thirteenth Century — 
Visigoth Kings Recover Their Land — Its 
Changed Conditions — Effect of Arab Civiliza- 
tion upon Spanish Nation — Fernando HI. — 
Spain Draws into Closer Companionship with 
European States — Alfonso X.— Spain Becoming- 
Picturesque— The Bull-Fight— Beautiful Gra- 
nada — The Alhambra, 87 

CHAPTER XV. 

Perpetual Civil War between Spanish States— Cas- 
tile and Aragon Absorb the Others and in Con- 
flict for Supremacy — Pedro the Cruel — The 
' • Black Prince " His Champion against Aragon 
— John of Gaunt — His Claim upon the Throne of 
Castile — His Final Compromise — Political Con- 
ditions Contrasted with Those of Other 
States, . . 94 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Death of Juan II.— Enrique IV.— Isabella— Her Mar- 
riage with Ferdinand of Aragon — Isabella 



CONTENTS. XI 

PAGE 

Crowued Queen of Castile— Ferdinand, King of 
Aragon — The Two Crowns United — Character- 
istics of the Two Sovereigns— The Inquisition 
Created— Jews Driven out of the Kingdom — 
Abdul- Hassan's Defiance — Zahara — Family 
Troubles at the Alhambra- Ayesha and Boab- 
dil— Alhama Captured by Ferdinand— Boabdil 
Supplants His Father— Massacre of the Aben- 
cerrages— Granada Besieged— Its Capitulation 
— Moorish Rule Ended in Spain, . . . loo 

CHAPTER XVIL 

Columbus and Isabella — Isabella's Private Griefs — 
Her Death — Charles, King under a Regency — 
Charles Elected Emperor of Germany — Spain 
during His Reign — Cruelties in the East and 
in the West— Vain Struggle with Protestantism 
— Abdication and Death of Charles, . . . io8 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Philip II.— Union of Spain and Portugal— The Duke 
of Alva in the Netherlands — War with Eng- 
land — Spanish Armada Destroyed — Death of 
Philip II. — Spain's Decline — Glory of the Name 
"Castilian," 117 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Philip III.— Rebellion of the Moriscos— Last of the 
Moors Conveyed to African Coast — Don Quixote 
—Philip IV. — Louis XIV. Marries Spanish In- 
fanta — A Diminishing Kingdom — Carlos II. — 
First Collision between Anglo-Saxon and 
Spaniard in America — Close of Hapsburg Dy- 
nasty in Spain, 125 



X" CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XX. 

PAGE 

New European Conditions— Louis XIV. — War 
of the "Spanish Succession" — Marlborough 
Checks Louis at Blenheim — Archduke Aban- 
dons Sovereignty in Spain — Peace of Utrecht 
— Further Dismemberment of Spain — Gibraltar 
Passes to England — Bourbon Dynasty — Com- 
mences with Philip V. — Ferdinand VI. — Carlos 
III. — Expulsion of the Jesuits, . . . .131 

CHAPTER XXI. 

A Dismantled Kingdom — Spanish-American Colo- 
nies — England and France at War over Ameri- 
can Boundaries — Spain the Ally of France — 
Loss of Some of Her West India Islands, and 
Capture of Havana and Manila by British — 
Florida Given in Exchange for Return of Con- 
quered Territory — Growing Irritation against 
England — France Aids American Colonies in 
War with England — Spain's Satisfaction at 
Their Success — Its Effect in Peru — Revolution 
in France — Rapid Rise of Napoleon — Carlos IV. 
Removed and Joseph Bonaparte King — Spain 
Joins Napoleon in War against England— Tra- 
falgar — Arthur Wellesley — Joseph Flees from 
His Kingdom 137 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Liberal Sentiment Developing — Constitution of 
1812 — Ferdinand VI. and Reactionary Meas- 
ures — Revolt of all the Spanish-American 
Colonies — The Holy Alliance — The Monroe 
Doctrine — Revolution in Spain — Spain under 



CONTENTS. xui 

PAGE 

the Protectorate of the Holy Alliance — Ferdi- 
nand Reinstated — Two Political Parties — Six 
Spanish-American Colonies Freed, . . . 144 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

The Salic Law and the Princess Isabella— The 
Carlists — Regency of Christine — Isabella II. — 
Her Expulsion from Spain — Amadeo — An Era 
of Republicanism — Castelar — Alfonso XII. Re- 
called — His Brief Reign and Death — Alfonso 
XIII., 150 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Birth of an Insurgent Party in Cuba— Ten Years* 
War — Impossible Reforms Promised — Revolu- 
tion Started by Jos6 Marti, 1895— Attitude of 
the American Government — General Weyler's 
Methods— Effect upon Sentiment in America- 
Destruction of the Battle -Ship J/«/«^— Verdict 
of Court of Inquiry— War Declared between 
Spain and America — The Approaching End, . 154 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 



CHAPTER I. 

No name is more fraught with picturesque 
and romantic interest than that of the " Span- 
ish Peninsula." 

After finishing this rare bit of handiwork 
nature seems to have thrown up a great 
ragged wall, stretching from sea to sea, to pro- 
tect it; and the Pyrenees have stood for ages 
a frowning barrier, descending toward France 
on the northern side from gradually decreas- 
ing heights — but on the Spanish side in wild 
disorder, plunging down through steep 
chasms, ravines, and precipices — with sharp 
cliffs towering thousands of feet skyward, 
which better than standing armies protect the 
sunny plains below. 

But the " Spanish Peninsula/' at the time 
we are about to consider, was neither " Span- 
ish '' nor was it a " peninsula." At the dawn 



2 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

of history this sunny corner of Europe was 
known as Iberia, and its people as Iberians. 

Time has effaced all positive knowledge of 
this aboriginal race; but they are believed to 
have come from the south, and to have been 
allied to the Libyans, who inhabited the 
northern coast of Africa. In fact, Iberi in 
the Libyan tongue meant freeman; and 
Berber, apparently derived from that word, 
was the term by which all of these western 
peoples were known to the Ancient Egyp- 
tians. 

But it is suspected that the Iberians found 
it an easy matter to flow into the land south 
of the Pyrenees, and that they needed no 
boats for the transit. There has always ex- 
isted a tradition of the joining of the two con- 
tinents, and now it is believed by geologists 
that an isthmus once really stretched across 
to the African coast at the narrowest point of 
the Straits, at a time when the waters of a 
Mediterranean gulf, and the waters flowing 
over the sands of Sahara, together found their 
outlet in the Indian Ocean. 

There is also a tradition that the adventu- 
rous Phenicians, who are known to have been 
in Iberia as early as 1300 b. c, cut a canal 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 3 

through the narrow strip of land, and then 
built a bridge across the canal. But a bridge 
was a frail link by which to hold the mighty 
continents together. The Atlantic, glad of 
such an entrance tO' the great gulf beyond, 
must have rushed impetuously through, 
gradually widening the opening, and (may 
have) thus permanently severed Europe and 
Africa; drained the Sahara dry; transformed 
the Mediterranean gulf into a Mediterranean 
Sea; and created a " Spanish Peninsula." 

How long this fair Peninsula was the un- 
disturbed home of the Iberians no one knows. 
Behind the rocky ramparts of the Pyrenees 
they may have remained for centuries uncon- 
scious of the Aryan torrent which was flood- 
ing Western Europe as far as the British Isles. 
Nothing has been discovered by which we 
may reconstruct this prehistoric people and 
(perhaps) civilization. But their physical 
characteristics we are enabled to guess; for 
just as we find in Cornwall, England, linger- 
ing traces of the ancient Britons, so in the 
mountain fastnesses of northern Spain linger 
the Basques, who are by many supposed to be 
the last survivors of that mysterious primitive 
race. 



4 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

The language of the Basques bears no re- 
semblance to any of the Indo-European, nor 
indeed to any known tongue. It is so diffi- 
cult, so intricate in construction, that only 
those who learn it in infancy can ever master 
it. It is said that, in Basque, " you spell Solo- 
mon, and pronounce it Nebuchadnezzar." 
Its antiquity is so great that one legend calls 
it the '' language of the angels," and another 
says that Tubal brought it to Spain before the 
lingual disaster at Babel! And still another 
relates that the devil once tried to learn it, 
but that, after studying it for seven years and 
learning only three words, he gave it up in 
despair. 

A language which, without literature, can 
so resist change, can so persist unmodified by 
another tongue spoken all around and about 
it, must have great antiquity; and there is 
every reason to believe that the Basque is a 
survival of the tongue spoken by the primi- 
tive Iberians, before the Kelts began to flow 
over and around the Pyrennees ; and also that 
the physical characteristics of this people are 
the same as those of their ancient progenitors ; 
small-framed, dark, with a faint suggestion of 
the Semitic in their swarthy faces. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 5 

We cannot say when it occurred, but at 
last the powerful, warlike Kelts had sur- 
mounted the barrier and were mingled with 
this non-Aryan people, and the resulting race 
thus formed was known to antiquity as the 
Keliiberians. 

It is probable that the rugged Kelt easily 
absorbed the race of more delicate type, and 
made it, in religion and customs, not unlike 
the Keltic Aryan in Gaul. But the physical 
characteristics of the other and primitive race 
are indelibly stamped upon the Spanish peo- 
ple; and it is probably to the Iberian strain in 
the blood that may be traced the small, dark 
type of men which largely prevails in Spain, 
and to some extent also in central and south- 
ern France. 

But the Keltiberians were Keltic in their 
religion. There are now in Spain the usual 
monuments found wherever Druid worship 
prevailed. Huge blocks of stone, especially 
in Cantabria and Lusitania (Portugal), stand- 
ing alone or in circles, tell the story of Druidi- 
cal rites, and of the worship of the ocean, the 
wind, and the thunder, and of the placating of 
the powers of nature by human sacrifices. 

The mingling of the Kelts and the Iberians 



6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

in varying proportions in different parts of 
Spain, and in some places (as among the 
Basques) their mingling not at all, produced 
that diversity of traits which distinguished the 
Asturians in the mountain gorges from their 
neighbors the Cantabrians, and both these 
from the Catalonians in the northeast and the 
Gallicians on the northwest coast, and from 
the Lusitanians, where now is Portugal; and 
still more distinguished the Basques, in the 
rocky ravines of the Pyrenees, from each and 
all of the others. And yet these unlike mem- 
bers of one family were collectively known as 
Keltiberians. 

While this race — hardy, temperate, brave, 
and superstitious — was leading its primitive 
life upon the Iberian peninsula, while they 
were shooting arrows at the sky to threaten 
the thunder, drawing their swords against the 
rising tide, and prizing iron more dearly than 
their abundant gold and silver, because they 
could hammer it into hooks, and swords, and 
spears — there had long existed in the East a 
group of wonderful civilizations: the Egyp- 
tian, hoary with age and steeped in wisdom 
and in wickedness; the Chaldeans, who, with 
" looks commercing with the skies," were the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 7 

fathers of astronomy; the Assyrians and 
Babylonians, with their wonderful cities of 
Nineveh and Babylon, and the Phenicians, with 
their no less famous cities of Sidon and Tyre. 
Sidon, which was the more ancient of these 
two, is said to have been founded by Sidon, 
the son of Canaan, who was the great-grand- 
son of Noah. 

Of all these nations it was the Phenicians 
w-ho were the most adventurous. They were 
a Semitic people, Syrian in blood, and their 
home was a narrow strip of coast on the east 
of the Mediterranean, where a group of free 
cities was joined into a confederacy held to- 
gether by a strong national spirit. 

Of these cities Sidon was once the head, 
but in time Tyre eclipsed it in splendor, and 
writers, sacred and profane, have sung her 
glories. 

These Phenicians had a genius for com- 
merce and trade. They scented a bargain 
from afar, and knew how to exchange " their 
broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and 
agate " (i Kings xxvii. i6), their glassware 
and their wonderful cloths dyed in Tyrian 
scarlet and purple, for the spices and jewels 
of the East, and for the gold and silver 



3 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

and the ivory and the eUony of the south 
and west. 

Their ships were coursing the Red Sea and 
the Persian Gulf and bringing back treasures 
from India and searching every inlet in the 
Mediterranean, and finally, either through the 
canal they are said to have cut, or the straits 
it had made, they sailed as far as the British 
Isles and brought back tin. 

But the gold and silver of the Iberian 
Peninsula were more alluring than the spices 
of India or the tin of Britain. So upon the 
Spanish coast they made permanent settle- 
ments and built cities. As early as iioo B. c. 
they had founded beyond the " Pillars of 
Hercules," the City of Gades (Cadiz), a walled 
and fortified town, and had taught the Kelt- 
iberians how to open and work their gold and 
silver mines systematically; and in exchange 
they brought an old civilization, with new 
luxuries, new ideas and customs into the lives 
of the simple people. 

But they bestowed something far beyond 
this — something more enriching than silver 
and gold, — an alphabet, — and it is to the 
Phenicians that we are indebted for the alpha- 
bet now in use throughout the civilized world. 



CHAPTER II. 

Such an extension of power, and the acqui- 
sition of sources of wealth so boundless, ex- 
cited the envy of other nations. 

The Greeks are said to have been in the 
Iberian peninsula long before the fall of Troy, 
where they came with a fleet from Zante, in 
the Ionian Sea, and in memory of that place, 
called the city they founded Zacynthus, which 
name in time became Saguntum. Now they 
sent more expeditions and founded more 
cities on the Spanish coast; and the Babylo- 
nians, and the Assyrians, and, at a later time, 
the Persians and the Greeks, all took up arms 
against these insatiate traders. 

Phenician supremacy was not easily main- 
tained with so many jealous rivals in the field, 
and it was rudely shaken in 850 B. c, when 

•• The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold," 

and the Phenician power was partially broken 
at its source in the East. 

It is with thrilling interest that we read 
9 



lO A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Isaiah's prophecy of the destruction of Tyre, 
which was written at this very time. For the 
Phenicians were the Canaanites of Bible his- 
tory, and " Hiram King of Tyre " was their 
king; and his " navy," which, together with 
Solomon's " came once in three years from 
Tarshish," was their navy; and Tarshish was 
none other than Tartessus, their own prov- 
ince, just beyond Gibraltar on the Spanish 
coast. Nor is it at all improbable that Span- 
ish gold was used to adorn the temple whicli 
the great Solomon was building, (i Kings 
ix., X.) Shakspere, who says all things better 
than anyone else, makes Othello find in the 
fatal handkerchief " confirmation strong as 
proofs from holy writ." Where can be found 
" confirmation " stronger than these " proofs 
from holy writ "? And where a more mag- 
nificent picture of the luxury, the sumptuous 
Oriental splendor of this nation at that period, 
than in Ezekiel, chapters xxvii., xxviii.? 
What an eloquent apostrophe to Tyre — 
" thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, 
a merchant of the people, for many isles." — 
" With thy wisdom and with thine under- 
standing thou hast gotten thee riches," and, 
" by thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIAT. II 

thou increased, and thine heart is lifted up." 
And then follows the terrible arraignment — 
" because of the iniquity of thy traiUcky And 
then the final prediction of ruin — " I will 
bring thee to ashes upon the earth "; " thou 
shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any 
more." Where in any literature can we find 
such lurid splendor of description, and such 
a powerful appeal to the imagination of the 
reader! And where could the student of his- 
tory find a more graphic and accurate pic- 
ture of a vanished civilization ! 

In 850 B. c, the same year in which the 
Assyrians partly subjugated the Phenicians in 
the East, the city of Carthage was founded 
upon the north coast of Africa, and there com- 
menced a movement, with that city as its cen- 
ter, which drew together all their scattered 
possessions into a Punic confederacy. This 
was composed of the islands of Sardinia, Cor- 
sica, part of Sicily, the Balearic Isles, and the 
cities and colonies upon the Spanish Peninsula 
and African coast. As the power of this con- 
federacy expands, the name Phenician passes 
away and that of Carthaginian takes its place 
in history. 

Carthage became a mighty city, and con- 



12 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIiV. 

trolled with a strong hand the scattered 
empire which had been planted by the 
Syrian tradesmen. Carthaginian merchants 
and miners were in Tartessus, and were plant- 
ing cities and colonies throughout the penin- 
sula, and a torrent of Carthaginian life was 
thus pouring into Spain for many hundred 
years, and the blood of the two races must 
have freely mingled. 

There are memorials of this time now ex- 
isting, not only in Phenician coins, medals, 
and ruins, but in the names of the cities. 
Barcelona, named after the powerful family of 
Barca in Carthage, to which Hannibal be- 
longed. Cartlmgena, a memorial of Carthage, 
which meant " the city "; and even Cordova is 
traced to its primitive form, — Kartah-duba, 
— meaning " an important city." While Isa- 
heUa, the name most famous in Spanish annals, 
has a still greater antiquity; and was none 
other than Jezebel — after the beautiful daugh- 
ter of the King of Sidon (the " Zidoneans "), 
who married Ahab, and lured him to his 
downfall. And we are told that this wicked 
siren whose dreadful fate Elijah foretold, 
was cousin to Dido, she who Virgil tells us 
" wept in silence " for the faithless ^neas. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 13 

With what a strange thrill do we find these 
threads of association between history sacred 
and profane, and both mingled with the mod- 
ern history of Spain. 

But Phenicia, for the " iniquity of her 
traffick," was doomed. The roots of this old 
Asiatic tree had been slowly and surely per- 
ishing, while her branches in the West were 
expanding. In the year 332 B. c. the siege and 
destruction of Tyre, predicted five hundred 
years before by Isaiah, was accomplished by 
Alexander the Great, and the words of the 
prophet found their complete fulfillment — 
that the people of Tarshish should find no 
city, no port, no welcome, when they came 
back to Syria! 

But on the northern coast of the Mediterra- 
nean there was another power which was wax- 
ing, while the Carthaginian was waning. 
The occupation of the young Roman Repub- 
lic was not trade, but conquest. A bitter 
enmity existed between the two nations. 
Rome was determined to break this grasping 
old Asiatic confederacy and to drive it out of 
Europe. The Spanish Peninsula she knew 
little about, but the rich islands near her own 
coast — they must be hers. 



14 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPA 117. 

When, after the first Punic war (264-241 
B. c), the Carthaginians saw Sardinia and 
Sicily torn from them, Hamilcar, their great 
general, determined upon a plan of vengeance 
which should make of Italy a Punic province. 
His people were strong upon the sea, but for 
this war of invasion they must have an army, 
too. So he conceived the idea of making 
Spain the basis of his military operations, and 
recruiting an immense army from the Iberian 
Peninsula. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Carthaginian occupation of Spain had 
not extended much beyond the coast, and had 
been rather in the nature of a commercial alli- 
ance with a few cities. Now Hamilcar de- 
termined, by placating, and by bribes, and if 
necessary by force, to take possession of the 
Peninsula for his own purposes, and to make 
of the people a Punic nation under the com- 
plete dominion of Carthage. So his first task 
was to win, or to subdue, the Keltiberians. 
He built the city of New Carthage (now 
Carthagena), he showed the people how to de- 
velop their immense resources, and by prom- 
ises of increased prosperity won the confi- 
dence and sympathy of the nation, and soon 
had a population of millions from which to 
recruit its army. 

When his son Hannibal was nine years old, 
at his father's bidding he placed his hand upon 
the altar and swore eternal enmity to Rome. 
The fidelity of the boy to his oath made a 
great deal of history. H^e took up the task 



l6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

when his father laid it down, inaugurated the 
second Punic war (218-201 b. c); and for 
forty years carried on one of the most des- 
perate struggles the world has ever seen; the 
hoary East in struggle with the young West. 

Saguntum was that ancient city in Valencia 
which was said to have been founded by the 
Greeks long before Homer sang of Troy, 
or, indeed, before Helen brought ruin upon 
that city. At all events its antiquity was 
greater even than that of the Phenician cities 
in Spain, and after being long forgotten by 
the Greeks it had drifted under Roman pro- 
tection. It was the only spot in Spain which 
acknowledged allegiance to Rome; and for 
that reason was marked for destruction as an 
act of defiance. 

The Saguntines sent an embassy to Rome. 
These men made a pitiful and passionate ap- 
peal in the Senate Chamber: " Romans, allies, 
friends! help! help! Hannibal is at the gates 
of our city. Hannibal, the sworn enemy of 
Rome. Hannibal the terrible. Hannibal 
who fears not the gods, neither keeps faith 
with men. [" Punic faith " was a byword.] 
O Romans, fathers, friends! help while there 
is yet time/' 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. i7 

But they found they had a " protector " 
who did not protect. The senators sent an 
embassy to treat with Hannibal, but no sol- 
diers. So, with desperate courage, the Sag- 
untines defended their beleaguered city for 
weeks, hurling javeHns, thrusting their lances, 
and beating down the besiegers from the 
walls. They had no repeating rifles nor dyna- 
mite guns, but they had the terrible falaric, 
a shaft of fir with an iron head a yard long, at 
the point of which was a mass of burning tow, 
which had been dipped in pitch. When a 
breach was made in the walls, the inflowing 
army would be met by a rain of this deadly 
falaric, which was hurled with telling power 
and precision. Then, in the short interval of 
rest this gave them, men, women, and chil- 
dren swiftly repaired the broken walls before 
the next assault. 

But at last the resourceful Hannibal aban- 
doned his battering rams, and with pickaxes 
undermined the wall, which fell with a crash. 
When asked to surrender, the chief men of the 
city kindled a great fire in the market-place, 
into which they then threw all the silver and 
gold in the treasury, their own gold and silver 
and garments and furniture, and then cast 



1 8 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

themselves headlong into the flames. This 
was their answer. 

Sagnntum, which for more than a thousand 
years had looked from its elevation out upon 
the sea, was no more, and its destruction was 
one of the thrilling tragedies of ancient his- 
tory. On its site there exists to-day a town 
called Mur Viedro (old walls), and these old 
walls are the last vestige of ancient Sagun- 
tum. 

In order to understand the indifference of 
Rome to the Spanish Peninsula at this time, it 
must be remembered that Spain was then the 
uttermost verge of the known world, beyond 
which was only a dread waste of waters and of 
mystery. To the people of Tyre and of 
Greece, the twin " Pillars of Hercules " had 
marked the limit beyond which there was 
nothing; and those two columns, Gibraltar 
and Ceuta, with the legend ne plus ultra en- 
twined about them, still survive, as a symbol, 
in the arms of Spain and upon the Spanish 
coins; and what is still more interesting to 
Americans, in the familiar mark ($) which rep- 
resents a dollar. (The English name for the 
Spanish peso is pillar -dollar.) 

Now Rome was aroused from its apathy. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 19 

It sent an army into Spain, led by Scipio the 
Elder, known as Scipio Africanus. When 
he fell, his son, only twenty-four years old, 
stood up in the Roman Forum and offered to 
fill the undesired post; and, in 210 B.C., Scipio 
" the Younger " — and the greater — took the 
command — as Livy eloquently says — " be- 
tween the tombs of his father and his uncle," 
who had both perished in Spain within a 
month. 

The chief feature of Scipio's policy was, 
while he was defeating Hannibal in battles, to 
be undermining him with his native allies; 
and to make that people realize to what hard 
taskmasters they had bound themselves; and 
by his own manliness and courtesy and jus- 
tice to win them to his side. 

He marched his army swiftly and unexpect- 
edly upon New Carthage, the capital and cen- 
ter of the whole Carthaginian movement, sent 
his fleet to blockade the city, and planned 
his moves with such precision that the 
fleet for the blockade and the army for the 
siege arrived before the city on the same 
day. 

Taken entirely by surprise, New Carthage 
was captured without a siege. Not one of the 



20 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

inhabitants was spared, and spoil of fabulous 
amounts fell to the victors. 

It seems like a fairj^ tale — or like the story 
of Mexico and Peru 1800 years later — to read 
of 276 golden bowls which were brought 
to Scipio's tent, countless vessels of silver, 
and 18 tons of coined and wrought 
silver. 

But the richest part of the prize was the 750 
Spanish hostages — high in rank of course — 
whom the various tribes had given in pledge 
of their fidelity to Carthage. Now Scipio held 
these pledges, and they were a menace and a 
promise. They were Roman slaves, but he 
could by kindness, and by holding out the 
hope of emancipation, placate and further 
bind to him the native people. 

By an exercise of tact and clemency Scipio 
gained such an ascendancy over the inhabi- 
tants, and so moved were they by this unex- 
pected generosity and kindness, that many 
would gladly have made him their king. 

But he seems to have been the '' noblest 
Roman of them all," and when saluted as king 
on one occasion he said: " Never call me king. 
Other nations may revere that name, but 
no Roman can endure it. My soldiers have 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 21 

given me a more honorable title — that of 
general." 

Such nobility, such a display of Roman 
virtue, was a revelation to these barbarians; 
and they felt the grandeur of the words, 
though they could not quite understand them. 
They were won to the cause of Rome, and 
formed loyal alliances with Scipio which they 
never broke. 

In the year 206 b. c. Gades (Cadiz), the last 
stronghold, was surrendered to the Romans, 
and the entire Spanish Peninsula had been 
wrenched from the Carthaginians. 

Iheria was changed to Hispania, and fifteen 
years later' the whole of the Peninsula was or- 
ganized into a Roman province, thenceforth 
known in history, not as Iberia, nor yet His- 
pania; but Spain, and its people as Spaniards, 

At the end of the third Punic war (149-146 
B. C. ), the ruin of the Carthaginians was com- 
plete. Hannibal had died a fugitive and a 
suicide. His nation had not a single ship upon 
the seas, nor a foot of territory upon the earth, 
and the great city of Carthage was plowed 
and sowed with salt. Rome had been used by 
Fate to fulfill her stern decree — " Delenda est 
Carthago.'' 



22 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

It was really only a limited portion of the 
Peninsula; a fringe of provinces upon the 
south and east coast, which had been under 
Carthaginian and now acknowledged Roman 
dominion. Beyond these the Keltiberian 
tribes in the center formed a sort of confedera- 
tion, and consented to certain alliances with 
the Romans; while beyond them, intrenched 
in their own impregnable mountain fastnesses, 
were brave, warlike, independent tribes, which 
had never known anything but freedom, 
whose names even, Rome had not yet heard. 
The stern virtue and nobility of Scipio proved 
a delusive promise. Rome had not an easy 
task, and other and brutal methods were to be 
employed in subduing stubborn tribes and 
making of the whole a Latin nation. In one 
of the defiles of the Pyrenees there may now be 
seen the ruins of fortifications built by Cato 
the Elder, not long after Scipio, which show 
how early those free people in the north were 
made to feel the iron heel of the master and to 
learn their lesson of submission. 

The century which followed Scipio's con- 
quest was one of dire experience for Spain. 
A Roman army was trampling out every ves- 
tige of freedom in provinces which had known 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 23 

nothing else; and more than that, Roman 
diplomacy was making of their new posses- 
sion a lighting ground for the civil war which 
was then raging at Rome; and partisans of 
Marius and of Sylla were using and slaugh- 
tering the native tribes in their own desperate 
struggle. Roman rule was arrogant and 
oppressive, Roman governors cruel, arbitrary, 
and rapacious, and the boasted '' Roman vir- 
tue " seemed to have been left in Rome, when 
treaties were made only to be violated at 
pleasure. 



CHAPTER IV. 

As nature delights in adorning the crevices 
of crumbling ruins with mosses and graceful 
lichens, so literature has busied itself with 
these historic ruins; and Cervantes has made 
the siege of Numantia (134 B. c.) — more ter- 
rible even than that of Saguntum — the sub- 
ject of a poem, in which he depicts the horrors 
of the famine. 

Lira, the heroine, answers her ardent lover 
Mirando in high-flown Spanish phrase, which, 
when summed up in plain English prose, 
means that she cannot listen to his wooing, 
because she is so hungry — which, in view of 
the fact that she has not tasted food for weeks, 
seems to us not surprising! 

Sertorius, whose story is told by Plutarch, 
affords another picturesque subject for Cor- 
neille in one of his most famous tragedies. 
This Roman was an adherent of Marius in the 
long struggle with Sylla, and while upholding 
his cause in Spain he won to his side the peo- 
24 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SFAIH. 25 

pie of Lusitania (Portugal), who made him 
their ruler, and helped him to fight the great 
army of the opposing Roman faction, part of 
which was led by Pompey. 

Mithridates, in Asia Minor, was also in con- 
flict with Sylla, and sent an embassy to Ser- 
torius which led to a league between the two 
for mutual aid, and for the defense of the cause 
of Marius. But senators of his own party be- 
came jealous of the great elevation of Ser- 
torius, and conspired to assassinate him at a 
feast to which he was invited. So ended {y2 
B. c.) one of the most picturesque characters 
and interesting episodes in the difficult march 
of barbarous Spain toward enlightenment and 
civilization. 

Sertorius seems to have been a great ad- 
ministrator as well as fighter, and must also be 
counted one of the civilizers of Spain. He 
founded a school at Osca, — now Huesca, — 
where he had Roman and Greek masters for 
the Spanish youth. And it is interesting to 
learn that there is to-day at that city a uni- 
versity which bears the title " University of 
Sertorius." 

But it is not the valor nor the sagacity of 
Sertorius which made him the favorite of 



26 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIA'. 

poets; but the story of the White Hind, which 
he made to serve him so ingeniously in estab- 
lishing his authority with the Lusitanians. 

A milk-white fawn, on account of its rarity, 
was given him by a peasant. He tamed her, 
and she became his constant companion, un- 
aflfrighted even in the tumult of battle. He 
saw that the people began to invest the little 
animal with supernatural qualities; so, finally, 
he confided to them that she was sent to him 
by the Goddess Diana, who spoke to him 
through her, and revealed important secrets. 

Such is the story which Corneille and 
writers in other lands have found so fascinat- 
ing, and which an English author has made 
the subject of his poem " The White Hind of 
Sertorius." 

Another Roman civil war, more pregnant 
of great results, was to be fought out in Spain. 
Julius Csesar's conspiracy against the Roman 
Republic, and his desperate fight with Pom- 
pey for the dictatorship, long drenched Span- 
ish soil with blood, and had its final culmina- 
tion (after Pompey*s tragic death in Egypt) 
in Caesar's victory over Pompey's sons at 
Munda, in Spain, 45 B. c. 

With this event, the military triumphs and 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 27 

the intrigues of Caesar had accomplished his 
purpose. He was declared Imperator, per- 
petual Dictator of Rome, and religious sacri- 
fices were decreed to him as if he were a god. 
Unconscious of the chasm which was yawning 
at his feet he haughtily accepted the honors 
and adulation of men who were at that very 
moment conspiring for his death. On the 
fatal " Ides of March " (44 B. c.) he was 
stricken in the Senate Chamber by the hands 
of his friends, and the great Caesar lay dead at 
the feet of Pompey's statue. 

The world had reached a supreme crisis in 
its existence. Two events — the most mo- 
mentous it has ever known — were at hand: 
the birth of a Roman Empire, which was to 
perish in a few centuries, after a life of amaz- 
ing splendor; and the birth of a spiritual king- 
dom, which would never die! 

Caesar's nephew, Octavius Augustus, by 
gradual approaches reached the goal toward 
which no doubt his greater uncle was moving. 
After defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippl 
(42 B. c.) and then after destroying his only 
competitor, Antony, at Actium (31 B.C.) he 
assumed the imperial purple under the name 
of Augustus. The title sounded harmless. 



aS A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

but its wearer had founded the " Roman Em- 
pire." 

At last there was peace. Spain was pacified, 
and only here and there did she struggle in the 
grasp of the Romans. Augustus, to make 
sure of the permanence of this pacification, 
himself went to the Peninsula. He built 
cities in the plains, where he compelled the 
stubborn mountaineers to reside, and estab- 
lished military colonies in the places they had 
occupied. 

Saragossa was one of these cities in the 
plains, and its name was " Caesar Augusta," 
and many others have wandered quite as far 
from their original names, which may, how- 
ever, still be traced. 

It is said that " the annals of the happy are 
brief." Let us hope that poor Spain, so long 
harried by fate, was happy in the next four 
hundred years, for her story can be briefly 
told. She seemed to have settled into a state 
of eternal peace. It was a period not of 
external events, but of a process — an internal 
process of assimilation. Spain, in every de- 
partment of its life, was becoming Latinized. 

A people of rare intellectual activity had 
been united to the life of Rome at the mo- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 29 

ment of her greatest intellectual elevation. 
Was it strange that no Roman province ever 
produced so long a list of historians, poets, 
philosophers, as did Southern Spain after the 
Augustan conquest? When we read the list 
of great Roman authors who were born in 
Spain — the three Senecas, one of whom, the 
author and wit, opened his veins at the com- 
mand of Nero (65 A. D.), and another, the 
Gallio of the book of Acts; also Lucan, Mar- 
tial, and Quint ilian, when we read these 
names native to Spain, it seems as if the 
source of inspiration had removed from the 
banks of the Tiber to the banks of the 
Guadalquivir. 

Nowhere can the student of Roman an- 
tiquities find a richer field than in Spain. And 
not only that, there is to-day in the manners 
and customs, and in the habits of the peasan- 
try, a pervading atmosphere of the classic land 
which adopted them, which all that has oc- 
curred since has been powerless to efface, 
while the language of Spain is Latin to its 
core. Nor is this strange when we reflect 
that they were under this powerful influence 
for a period as long as from Christopher 
Columbus to the Spanish- American War! 



CHAPTER V. 

In the history of nations there is one fact 
which again and again with startling uniform- 
ity repeats itself. The rough, strong races 
from the north menace, and at last rudely 
dominate more highly civilized but less hardy 
races at the South, to the ultimate benefit of 
both, although with much present discom- 
fort to the conquered race! 

In Greece it was first the rude Hellenes who 
overran the Pelasgians. And again, long 
after that, there was another descent of fierce 
northern barbarians, — the Dorians from 
Epirus, — who, when they took possession 
of the Peloponnesus and became the Spar- 
tanSy infused that vigorous strain without 
which the history of Greece might have been 
a very tame affair. In the British Isles it was 
the Picts and Scots, who would have done 
the same thing with England, perhaps, if the 
Angles and Saxons had not come to the res- 
cue, while Spain had her own Picts and Scots 
in the mountain tribes of the Pyrenees. But 



yf SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 3' 

in the fifth century there was the most stu- 
pendous ilktstration of this tendency, when all 
of Southern Europe was at last inundated by 
that northern deluge, and the effete Roman 
Empire was effaced. 

The process had been a gradual one; had 
commenced, in fact, two centuries before the 
overthrow of the Roman Republic. But not 
until the fourth century, after the wicked old 
empire had espoused Christianity, did it be- 
come obvious that its foundations were under- 
mined by this flood of barbarians. In 410 
A. D., when the West-Goths, under Alaric, 
entered and sacked Rome, her power was 
broken. The roots no longer nourished the 
distant extremities in Britain and Gaul, and it 
was only a question of time when these, too, 
should succumb to the inflowing tide. 

The Ostro-Goths — or East-Goths — in 
Northern Italy, and the Visigoths — or West- 
Goths — in Gaul, were setting up kingdoms of 
their own, under a Roman protectorate. The 
long period of peace in Spain was broken. 
The Pyrenees, with their warlike tribes, de- 
fended her for a time; but the Suevi and the 
Vandals — the latter a companion tribe of the 
Goths — had found an easier entrance by the 



32 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

sea on the east. They flowed down toward the 
south, and from thence across to the north- 
ern coast of Africa, which they colonized, 
leaving a memorial in Spain, in the lovely 
province of Andalusia, which was named after 
them — Vandalusia. But before the sacking 
of Rome a wave of the Gothic invasion had 
overflowed the Pyrenees, and Northern Spain 
had become a part of the Gothic kingdom in 
Gaul, with the city of Toulouse as its head. 

A century of contact with Roman civiliza- 
tion had wrought great changes in this 
conquering race. They were untamed in 
strength, but realized the value of the civilities 
of life, and of intellectual superiority; and 
even strove to acquire some of the arts and 
accomplishments of the race they were in- 
vading. They were not yet acknowledged 
entire masters of Gaul and northern Spain. 
On condition of military service they had un- 
disputed possession of their territory, with 
their own king, laws, and customs, but were 
nominally subjects of the Roman Emperor, 
Honorius. 

Their attitude toward the Romans at this 
period cannot better be told than in the words 
of Ataulf himself (or Ataulfus, or Adolphus), 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 33 

whose interesting story will be briefly related. 
He says : 

" It was my first wish to destroy the Roman 
name and erect in its place a Gothic Empire, 
taking to myself the place and the powers of 
Caesar Augustus. But when experience 
taught me that the untamable barbarism of 
the Goths would not suffer them to live under 
the sway of law, and that the abolition of the 
institutions on which the state rested would 
involve the ruin of the state itself, I chose in- 
stead the glory of renewing and maintaining 
by Gothic strength the fame of Rome; pre- 
ferring to go down to posterity as the restorer 
of that Roman power which it was beyond my 
power to replace." 

These are not the words of a barbarian; 
although by the corrupt and courtly nobles in 
Rome he was considered one; but no doubt 
he towered far above the barbarous host 
whom he helped to lead into Rome in the 
year 410 A. D. 

Ataulf was the brother-in-law of Alaric, and 
succeeded that great leader in authority after 
his death (410 A. D.). 

At the time of the sacking of Rome this 
Gothic prince fell in love with Placidia, the 



34 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

sister of the Emperor Honorius; and after the 
fashion of his people, carried her away as his 
captive; not an unwilling one, we suspect, for 
we learn of her great devotion to her brave, 
strong wooer, with blond hair and blue eyes. 
Ataulf took his fair prize to the city of Nar- 
bonne in southern France, and made her his 
Queen. But when Constantius, a disap- 
pointed Roman lover of Placidia's, instigated 
Honorius to send an army against him and 
his Goths, he withdrew into Spain, and estab- 
lished his court with its rude splendor in the 
ancient city of Barcelona. 

He seems to have had not an easy task be- 
tween the desire to please his haughty Roman 
bride and, at the same time, to repel the 
charge of his people that he was becoming 
effeminate and Romanized; and, finally, so 
jealous did they become of her influence that 
Ataulf was assassinated in the presence of his 
wife, all his children butchered, and the 
proud Placidia compelled to walk barefoot 
through the streets of Barcelona. 

Constantius, the faithful Roman lover, 
came with an army and earned back to Rome 
the royal widow, who married him and became 
the mother of Valentinian HI., who succeeded 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 35 

his uncle Honorius as Emperor of Rome in 
425 A. D., under the regency of Placidia dur- 
ing his infancy. 

This romance, lying at the very root of a 
Gothic dynasty in Spain, marks the earliest 
beginnings of a line of Visigoth kings. 
Ataulf's successor removed his court to Tou- 
louse in France, and Spain for many years 
remained only an outlying province of the 
Gothic kingdom; her turbulent northern 
tribes refusing to accept or to mingle with 
the strange intruders. When driven by the 
Romans from their mountain fastnesses 
the Basques, many of them, were at that 
time dispersed through southern and cen- 
tral France; which accounts for the pres- 
ence of that race in France, before alluded to. 

In the second half of the fifth century At- 
tila, " the Scourge of God," swept down upon 
Europe with his Huns, — mysterious, terrible, 
as a fire out of heaven, and more like an army 
of demons than men, — destroying city after 
city, and driving the people before them, until 
they came to Orleans. There they met the 
combined Roman and Gothic armies. The- 
odoric, the Visigoth king, was killed on the 
battlefield. But to him, and to the Roman 



36 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

general ^tius, belongs the glory of the defeat 
of the Huns (451 A. D.). 

It was Evaric, the son of this Theodoric, 
who finally completed the conquest of the 
Spanish Peninsula, and with him really com- 
mences the line of Visigoth kings in Spain, 
and the conversion of that country into a 
Gothic empire,"^' entirely independent of 
Rome. 

The German Franks, under Clovis, estab- 
lished their kingdom in Gaul 481 A« D. 
The Angles and Saxons in 446 A. D. did 
the same in Britain. The Ostrogoths had 
their own kingdom in northern Italy and 
southern Gaul (Burgundy). So, with the 
Visigoths ruling in Spain, the " northern del- 
uge " had in the fifth century practically sub- 
merged the whole of Europe, and above its 
dark waters showed only the somber wreck of 
a Roman empire. 

From this fusing of Roman and Teutonic 
races there were to arise two types of civiliza- 
tion, utterly different in kind, the Anglo- 
Saxon and the Latin. In one the prevailing 
element, after the fusing was complete, was 

*The famous Gothic code established by him still linger 
in much of Spanish jurisprudence. 



A SI/O/^T HISTORY OF SPAIN. 37 

to be the Teutonic; in the other, the Roman. 
Herein Hes the difference between these two 
great divisions of the human family, and this 
is the germinal fact in the war raging to-day 
between Spain and the United States. It is 
a difference created not by the mastery of 
arms, but by the more efficient mastery of 
ideas. 

When the Angles and Saxons conquered 
Britain, after a Roman occupation of over 
three hundred years, they swept it clean of 
Roman laws, literature, and civilization. 
Untamed pagan barbarians though they 
were, they had fine instincts and simple ideals 
of society and government, and they cast out 
the corrupt old empire, root and branch. 

The Visigoths in Spain, more enlightened 
than they, already Christianized, and, perhaps, 
even superior in intelligence, were content in 
the words of Ataulf — " to renew and maintain 
by Gothic strength the fame of Rome." So 
they built upon the ruins of decaying institu- 
tions of a corrupt civilization, a kingdom 
which flourished with the enormous vitality 
drawn from the conquering race, which race 
was in turn conquered by Roman ideals. 

So, in the conflict now existing between 



38 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Spain and the United States, we see the Span- 
iard, the child of the Romans; valorous, pic- 
turesque, cruel, versed in strategic arts, and 
with a savor of archaic wickedness which be- 
longs to a corrupt old age. In the American 
we see the child of the simple Angles and Sax- 
ons, no less brave, but just, and with an 
enthusiasm and confiding integrity which 
seems to endow him with an imperishable 
youth. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The story of Ulfilas, who Christianized the 
pagan Goths in the last half of the fourth cen- 
tury, is really the first chapter not alone in the 
history of Gothic civilization but in that of 
the German and English literatures; which, 
with their vast riches, had their origin in the 
strange achievement of Ulfilas. He had, 
while a boy, been captured by some Goths off 
the coast of Asia Minor, and was called by 
them " Wulf-ilas " (little wolf). In his de- 
sire to translate the Bible to his captors 
" Wulf-ilas reduced the Gothic language to 
writing. He had first to create an alpha- 
bet; taking twenty-two Roman letters, and 
inventing two more: the letter w, and still 
another for th. So while, after Constantine, 
the Christian religion was being adopted by 
the Roman Empire, and while its simple dog- 
mas were being discussed and refined into a 
complicated and intricate system by men 
versed in Greek philosophy, and then formu- 



40 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

lated by minds trained in logic and rhetoric, 
the same religion was being spelled out in 
simple fashion by the Goths in central Europe 
from the book translated for them by Ulfilas. 

All they found was that Jesus Christ was 
the beloved son of God and the Saviour of the 
world; that he was the long-promised 
Messiah, and to believe in him and to follow 
his teachings was salvation. They knew 
nothing of the Trinity nor of any theologic 
subtleties, and this was the simple faith which 
the Goths carried with them into the lands 
they conquered. 

The Romans, who had spent three centuries 
in burning Christians and trying to obliterate 
the religion of Christ, were now its jealous 
guardians. They considered this " Arian- 
ism," as it was called, a blasphemous heresy, 
so shocking that they refused to call it Chris- 
tianity at all. The history of the first century 
of the Gothic kingdom in Spain was therefore 
mainly that of the deadly strife between Arian- 
ism and Catholicism, or orthodoxy. The 
Goths could not discuss, for they were utterly 
unable to understand even the terms under 
discussion ; but they could fight and lay down 
their lives for the faith which had done so 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIH, 4* 

much for them; and this they did freely and 
fiercely. 

So the simple Gothic people were bewil- 
dered by finding themselves in the presence of 
a Christianity incomprehensible to them; a 
complicated, highly organized social order, 
equally incomprehensible; and a science and a 
literature of which they knew nothing. They 
might struggle for a while against this tide of 
superiority, but one by one they entered the 
fascinating portals of learning and of art, ac- 
cepted the dogmas of learned prelates, and a 
few generations were sufficient to make them 
meek disciples of the older civilization. 

The Spanish language fairly illustrates the 
result from this incongruous mingling of 
Roman and Gothic. It is said to be a lan- 
guage of Latin roots with a Teutonic gram- 
mar. 

The Goths laid rough hands on the speech 
they consented to use, and the smooth, 
sonorous Latin was strangely broken and 
mixed with Gothic words and idioms; yet it 
became one of the most copious, flexible, and 
picturesque of languages, with a literature 
marvelously rich and beautiful. 

In precisely the same way was the classic 



42 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

old ruin of a Roman state re-enforced with a 
rough Gothic framework, and after centuries 
have hidden the joints and the scars with 
mosses and verdure, we have a picturesque 
and beautiful Spain! 

But barbarous kings were fighting other 
things besides heresy. There were rebellions 
to put down; there were remnants of Sueves 
and of Roman power to drive out, and there 
were always the fierce mountain tribes who 
never mingled with any conquerors, nor had 
ever surrendered to anything but the Catholic 
faith. 

There were intermarriages between the 
three Gothic kingdoms, in Burgundy, Gaul» 
and Spain, and the history of some of these 
royal families shows what wild passions still 
raged among the Goths, and what atrocities 
were strangely mingled with ambitious proj- 
ects and religion. 

Athanagild, one of the Visigoth kings, gave 
his daughter Brunhilde in marriage to the 
King of the Franks in Gaul. The story of 
this terrible Queen, stained with every crime, 
and accused of the death of no less than ten 
kings, comes to a fitting end when, we arc 
told, that in her wicked old age she was tied 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 43 

to the tail of an unbroken horse and dragged 
over the stones of Paris (600 A, D.). 

At this time Leovigild (570-587), the Visi- 
goth King, was ruling Spain with a strong 
hand. He had assumed more splendor than 
any of his predecessors. He had erected a 
magnificent throne in his palace at Toledo, 
and his head, wearing the royal diadem, was 
placed on Spanish coins, which may still be 
seen. A daughter of the terrible Brunhilde, 
the Princess Ingunda, came over from France 
to become the wife of Ermingild, the son of 
the great King Leovigild, and heir to his 
throne. 

All went smoothly until it was discovered 
that this fair Princess was a Catholic, and was 
artfully plotting to win her husband over to 
her faith from the faith of his fathers — 
Arianism. 

Although Catholicism had made great in- 
roads among their people, never before had it 
invaded the royal household. And when his 
son declared his intention to desert their an- 
cient creed there commenced a terrible conflict 
between father and son, which finally led to 
Ermingild's open rebellion, and at last to his 
being beheaded by his father's order. But this 



44 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

crime against nature was in vain. Arianism 
had reached the limit of its life in Spain. 
Upon the death of Leovigild, his second son, 
Recared (587-601), succeeded to the throne, 
and one of his first acts was to abjure the old 
faith of the Gothic people, and Catholicism be- 
came the established religion of Spain. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Toledo, the capital of the Visigoth Kings, is 
the city about which cluster the richest memo- 
ries of Spain in her heroic age. When Leo- 
vigild removed his capital there from Seville 
in the sixth century, it was already an ancient 
Jewish city, about which tradition had long 
busied itself. To-day, as it sits on the sum- 
mit of a barren hill, one looks in vain for traces 
of its ancient Gothic splendor. But the spot 
where now stands a beautiful cathedral is hal- 
lowed by a wonderful legend, which Murillo 
made the subject of one of his great paintings. 
It is said that the Apostle St. James founded 
on that very spot the Church of Santa Maria; 
and that the Virgin, in recognition of the 
dedication to her, descended from heaven to 
present its Bishop, Ildofonso, with a mar- 
velous chasuble. In proof of this miracle, 
doubting visitors are still shown the marks of 
Mary's footprint upon a stair in the chapel! 
However this may be, it is on this very spot 



46 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

that King Recared formally abjured Arianism; 
and preserved in a cloister of the cathedral 
may still be seen the " Consecration Stone," 
which reads: that the Church of Santa Maria, 
— ^built probably on the foundation of the 
older church, — was consecrated under " King 
Recared the Catholic, 587 A. D." It also tells 
of the councils of the Spanish Church held 
there^ — at one of which councils was the 
famous canon which decreed that all future 
Kings must swear they would show no mercy 
to ** that accursed people '* — meaning the 
Jews. It was these very Jews who had 
brought commercial success and created the 
enormous wealth of the city, from which it 
was now the duty of the pious Visigoth Kings 
to harry and hunt them as if they were fright- 
ened deer. 

The Visigoth monarchy, although in many 
cases hereditary, was in fact elective. And 
the student of Spanish history will not find an 
orderly royal succession as in England and 
France. Disputes regarding the succession 
were not infrequent, and sometimes there will 
occur an interval with apparently no king at 
all, followed by another period when there are 
two — one ruling in the north and another in 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPATJ^. 47 

the south. *' The King is dead — long live the 
King! " might do for France, but not for 
Spain. 

During one of these periods of uncertainty, 
in the latter half of the seventh century, it is 
said that Leo, a holy man (afterward Pope), 
was told in a dream that the man who must 
wear the crown was then a laborer, living in 
the west, and that his name was Wamba, 
They traveled in search of this man almost 
to the borders of Portugal, and there they 
found the future candidate for the throne 
plowing in the field. The messengers, bow- 
ing before the plowman, informed him that 
he had been selected as King of Spain. 

Wamba laughed, and said, '' Yes, I shall be 
King of Spain when my pole puts forth 
leaves." 

Instantly the bare pole began to bud, and 
in a few moments was covered with verdure! 

In vain did Wamba protest. What could a 
poor man do in the face of such a miracle, 
and with a Spanish Duke pressing a poniard 
against his breast, and telling him to choose 
on the instant between a throne and a tomb! 

The unhappy Wamba suffered himself to 
be borne in triumph to Toledo, and there to 



48 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAm. 

be crowned. And a very wise and excellent 
King did he make. He seemed fully equal 
to the difficult demands of his new position. 
A rebellion, fomented by an ambitious Duke 
Paul, who gathered about his standard all the 
banished Jews, was a very formidable affair. 
But Wamba put it down with a firm hand, and 
then, when it was over, treated the conspira- 
tors and rebels with marvelous clemency. 
When his reign was concluded he left a record 
ol wisdom and sagacity rare in those days, in 
any land. 

His taking off the stage was as remarkable 
as his coming on. He fell into a trance 
(October 14, 680), and after long insensibility 
it was concluded that the King was dying. 
According to a custom of the period Wamba's 
head was shaved, and he was clothed in the 
habit of a monk. The meaning of this was 
that if he died, he would, as was fitting, pass 
into the Divine presence in penitential garb. 
But if, peradventure, the patient survived, he 
was pledged to spend the rest of his life in 
that holy vocation, renouncing eveiy worldly 
advantage. 

So when, after a few hours, Wamba, in per- 
fect health, opened his eyes, he found that in- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 49 

Stead of a King he was transformed into a 
Monk! 

Whether this was a cunning device of this 
philosophic King to lay down the burdens 
which wearied him, and spend the rest of his 
days in tranquillity; or whether it was the work 
of the Royal Prince, who joyfully assumed the 
diadem which he had so unwillingly worn, 
nobody knows. But Wamba passed the re- 
mainder of his days in a monastery near 
Burgos, and the ambitious Ervigius reigned 
as his successor. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

The Visigoth kingdom, which had stood 
for three centuries, had passed its meridian. 
It had created a magnificent background for 
historic Spain, and a heritage which would be 
the pride and glory of the proudest nation in 
Europe. The Goths had come as only rude 
intruders into that country; but to be 
descended from the Visigoth Kings was here- 
after to be the proudest boast of the Spaniard. 
And the man who could make good such 
claim to distinction was a Hidalgo; or in its 
original form, hijo-de-algo — son of somebody. 

But many generations of peace had im- 
paired the rugged strength and softened the 
sinews of the nation. It was the beginning of 
the end when, at the close of the seventh cen- 
tury, there were two rival claimants to the 
throne; and while the vicious and cruel 
Witiza reigned at Toledo, Roderick, the son 
of Theodofred, also reigned in Andalusia. 
There had been a long struggle, during which 



A SNORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-, 5 1 

it is said that Theodofred's eyes had been put 
out by his victorious rival, and his son Rod- 
erick had obtained assistance from the Greek 
Emperor at Byzantium in asserting his own 
claims. He succeeded in driving Witiza out 
of the country; and in 709, — " the last of the 
Goths," — was crowned at Toledo, King of 
all Spain. 

But the struggle w^as not over; and it was 
about to lead to a result which is one of the 
most momentous in the history, not alone of 
Spain, — nor yet of Europe, — but of Christen- 
dom. Witiza was dead, but his two sons, with 
a formidable following, were still trying to 
w^ork the ruin of Roderick. A certain Count 
Julian, who, on account of his daughter Flo- 
rinda, had his own wrongs to avenge, accepted 
the leadership of these rebels. The power of 
the Visigoths had extended across the nar- 
row strait (cut by the Phenicians) over to the 
opposite shore, where Morocco seems to be 
reaching out in vain endeavor to touch the 
land from which she was long ago severed; 
and there, at Tangiers, this arch-traitor laid 
his plans and matured the scheme of revenge 
and treachery which had such tremendous re- 
sults for Europe. With an appearance of per- 



52 A SHORT HISTORY OP SPAIN. 

feet loyalty he parted from Roderick, who 
unsuspectingly asked him to bring him some 
hawks from Africa when he returned. Bow- 
ing, he said : " Sire, I will bring you such 
hawks as never were seen in Spain before." 

For one hundred years an unprecedented 
wave of conquest had been moving from Asia 
toward the west. Mahommedanism, which 
was destined to become the scourge of Chris- 
tendom, had subjected Syria, Mesopotamia. 
Egypt, and northern Africa, until it reached 
Ceuta — the companion Pillar to Gibraltar on 
the African coast. 

At this point the Goths had stood, as a pro- 
tecting wall beyond which the Asiatic deluge 
could not flow. 

Count Julian was the trusted military 
commander of the Gothic garrisons in Mo- 
rocco, as Miisa, the oft-defeated Saracen 
leader, knew to his cost. As this Musa 
was one day looking with covetous eyes 
across at the Spanish Peninsula, he was 
suddenly surprised by a visit from Count 
Julian; and still more astonished when that 
commander offered to surrender to him the 
Gothic strongholds Tangier, Arsilla, and 
Ceuta in return for the assistance of the Sara- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 53 

cen army in the cause of Witiza's sons against 
Roderick. 

Amazed at such colossal treason, Musa re- 
ferred Count Julian to his master the Khalif, 
at Damascus, who at once accepted his infa- 
mous proposition. In Spanish legend and 
history this man is always designated as The 
Traitor, as if standing alone and o.i a pin- 
nacle among the men who have betrayed their 
countries. 

Musa, half doubting, sent a preliminary 
force of about five hundred Moors under a 
chief named Tarif, to the opposite coast ; and 
the Moors found, as was promised, that they 
might range at their own will and pleasure in 
that earthly paradise of Andalusia. The 
name of this Mussulman chief, Tarif, was 
given to the spot first touched by the feet of 
the Mahommedan, which was called Tarif a; 
and as Tarifa was afterward the place where 
customs were collected, the word tariif is an 
imperishable memorial of that event. In like 
manner Gibraltar was named Gehel-al-Tarik, 
(Mountain of Tarik) after the leader bearing 
that name, who was sent later by Musa with a 
larger force; which name has been gradually 
changed to its present form — Gibraltar. 



54 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Poor King Roderick, while still fighting to 
maintain his own right to the crown he wore, 
learned with dismay that his country was in- 
vaded by a horde of people from the African 
coast. Theodemir wrote to him: "So 
strange is their appearance that we might take 
them for inhabitants of the sky. Send me all 
the troops you can collect, without delay." 
The hawks promised by Count Julian had 
arrived ! 

The hour of doom had sounded for the last 
King of the Visigoths, and for his kingdom. 
There is a legend that a mysterious tower ex- 
isted near Toledo, which was built by Hercu- 
les, soon after Adam, with the command that 
no king or lord of Spain should ever seek to 
know what it contained ; instead of that it was 
the duty of each King to put a new lock upon 
its mysterious portal. 

It is said that Roderick, perhaps in his ex- 
tremity, resolved to disobey the command, 
and to discover the secret hidden in the En- 
chanted Tower. In a jeweled shrine in the 
very heart of the structure he came at last to 
a coffer of silver, " right subtly wrought," and 
far inside of that he reached the final mystery, 
— only this, — a white cloth folded between 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. SS 

two pieces of copper. With trembling eager- 
ness Roderick opened and found painted 
thereon men with turbans, carrying banners, 
with swords strung around their necks, and 
bows behind them, slung at the saddle-bow. 
Over these figures was written: '' When this 
cloth shall be opened, men appareled like 
these shall conquer Spain, and be the lords 
thereof." 

Such is the picturesque legend. Men with 
'' turbans and banners and swords slung about 
their necks," were assuredly now in Andalusia, 
led by Tarik, who had literally burned his 
ships behind him, and then told his followers 
to choose between victory or death. 

The twO' armies faced each other at a spot 
near Cadiz. It is said that Roderick, the de- 
generate successor of Alaric, went into battle 
in a robe of white silk embroidered with gold, 
sitting on a car of ivory, drawn by white 
mules. Tarik's men, who were fighting for 
victory or Paradise, overwhelmed the Goths; 
Roderick, in his flight, was drowned in the 
Guadalquivir, and his diadem of pearls and his 
embroidered robe were sent to Damascus as 
trophies. 

Count Julian urged that the victory be im- 



56 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

mediately followed up by Musa before there 
was time for the Spaniards to rally. One 
after another the cities of Toledo, Cordova, 
and Granada capitulated, the persecuted Jews 
flocking to the new standard and aiding in the 
conquest of their oppressors. 

As well might one have held back the At- 
lantic from rushing through that canal upon 
the isthmus, as to have stayed the inflowing of 
the Saracens through the breach made by 
"the Traitor," Count Julian! In less than 
two years Spain was a conquered province, 
rendering allegiance to the Khalif at Damas- 
cus, and the Moor, — as the followers of the 
Prophet in Morocco were called, — reigned in 
Toledo. 

It was in the year 412 that Ataulfus, with 
his haughty bride Placidia, had established his 
Court at Barcelona, and Romanized Spain 
became Gothic Spain. In 711 — ^just three 
centuries later — the Visigoth kingdom had 
disappeared as utterly beneath the Saracen 
flood as had its ill-fated King Roderick under 
the waters of the Guadalquivir; and fastened 
upon Christian Europe was a Mahommedan 
empire; an empire which all the combined 
powers of that continent have never since been 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 57 

able entirely to dislodge. From that ill- 
omened day in 709, when Tarif set foot on the 
Spanish coast, to this June of 1898, the 
Mahommedan has been in Europe; and re- 
mains to-day, a scourge and a blight in the 
territory upon which his cruel grasp still 
lingers. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Tarik and his twelve thousand Berbers,* 
or Moors, had at one stroke won the Spanish 
Peninsula. The banner of the Prophet waved 
over every one of the ancient and famous 
cities in Andalusia, and the turbaned army 
had marched through the stubborn north as 
far as the Spanish border. As Musa, intoxi- 
cated with success, stood at last upon the 
Pyrenees, he saw before him a vision of a sub- 
jugated Europe. The banner of the Prophet 
should wave from the Pyrenees to the Baltic! 
A mosque should stand where St. Peter's now 
stands in Rome! So, step by step, the 
Moslems pressed up into Gaul, and in 732 
their army had reached Tours. 

It was a moment of supreme peril for Chris- 
tendom. But, happily, the Franks had what 
the Goths had not — a great leader. Charles 
Martel, — then Maire du Palais, and virtually 
King of France, instead of the feeble Lothair, 

* The old Phenician name for the North African tribes, 
derived from the word Tberi. 



A SHORl' HISTORY OF SPAIN. 59 

— led his Franks into what was to be one of 
the most decisive of the world's battles; a bat- 
tle which would determine whether Europe 
should be Christian or Mahommedan. 

The tide of infidel invasion had reached its 
limits. The strong right arm of Charles dealt 
such ponderous blows that the Moslems broke 
in confusion, and this savior of Christendom 
was thenceforth known as Charles Martel: 
" Karl of the Hammer." 

After this crushing disaster at Tours the 
Moors realized that they were not invincible. 
Their vaulting ambition did not again try to 
overleap the Pyrenees; and they addressed 
themselves to settling affairs in their new 
territory. 

It has been wisely said that if the Mahom- 
medan state had been confined within the 
borders of Arabia, it would speedily have col- 
lapsed. Islam became a world-wide religion 
when it clothed itself with armor, and became 
a church militant. It was conquest which 
saved the faith of the Prophet. In its home 
in Asia the Empire of Mahommed was com- 
posed of hostile tribes and clans, and as it 
moved westward it gathered up Syrians, 
Egyptians, and the Berbers on the African 



6o A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

coast, who, when Morocco was reached, were 
known as Moors. This strange, heteroge- 
neous mass of humanity, all nourished from 
Arabia, was held together by two things : the 
Koran and the sword. 

When conquest was exchanged for peace- 
ful possession, all the internecine jealousies, 
the tribal feuds, and old hatreds burst forth, 
and the first fifty years of Moorish rule in 
Spain was a period of internal strife and dis- 
order — Arabs and Moors were jealously try- 
ing to undermine each other; while the Arabs 
themselves were torn by factions representing 
rival clans in Damascus. 

But a singular clemency was shown toward 
the conquered Spaniards. They were per- 
mitted to retain their own law and judges, and 
their own governors administered the affairs 
of the districts and collected the taxes. The 
rule of the conquering race bore upon the peo- 
ple actually less heavily than had the old 
Gothic rule. Jews and Christians alike were 
free to worship whom or what they pleased; 
but, at the same time, great benefits were be- 
stowed upon those who would accept the 
religion of the Prophet. The slave class, 
which was very large and had suffered terrible 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 6 1 

cruelties under its old masters, was treated 
with especial mildness and humanity. There 
was a simple road to freedom opened to every 
man. He had only to say, " There is one 
God, and Mahommed is his Prophet," and on 
the instant he became a freeman ! 

Such gentle proselytizing as this speedily 
won converts, not alone among slaves but 
from all classes. The pacification of Spain by 
the Romans had required centuries; while 
only a few years sufficed to make of the van- 
quished in the southern provinces, a contented 
and almost happy people ; not only reconciled, 
but even glad of the change of masters. 
Never was Andalusia so mildly, justly, and 
wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors. 

The most delicate of all problems is that of 
dealing with a conquered race in its own land. 
That this should have been so wisely and so 
skillfully handled would be incomprehensible 
if this had been really, what it is always 
called, a Moorish conquest. But to be accu- 
rate, it was a Moorish invasion and a Saracen 
conquest! 

The fierce Berber Moor contributed the 
brute force, which was wielded by Saracen 
intelligence. 



62 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

The Saracens were the leaven which pene- 
trated the whole sodden mass of Mahommed- 
anism. With a civilization which had been 
ripening for centuries under Oriental skies, — 
rich in wisdom, learning, culture, science, and 
in art, — they had come into Europe, infidels 
though they were, to build up and not to 
destroy. 

The Roman conquest of Spain had civil- 
ized a barbarous race. The Gothic con- 
quest of Romanized Spain had converted 
an effete civilization into a strong semi- 
barbarism. Now again the Saracen had 
come from the East to convert a semi- 
barbarism into a civilization richer than 
any Spain had yet known, and, more 
than that, to hold up a torch of learning 
and enlightenment which should illumine 
Europe in the days of darkness which were 
at hand. Although this difference between 
Arab and Moor primarily existed, they be- 
came fused, and we shall speak of them only 
as Moors. But we should not lose sight of 
the fact that the superior intelligence which 
made the Moorish kingdom magnificent was 
from the land of the Prophet. 

The Saracen dealt gently with the con- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAm. 63 

quered Spaniard, not because his heart was 
tender and kind, but because he was crafty and 
wise, and knew when not to use force, in order 
to accomplish his ends. For the same reason 
he refrained from trying to break the spirit of 
the independent northern provinces, where 
the descendants of the old Visigoths — the 
Hidalgos ("sons-of-somebody") — proudly in- 
trenched themselves in an attitude of defiance, 
making in time a clearly defined Christian 
north and Moslem south, with a mountain 
range (the Sierra Guadarrama) and a river 
(the Ebro) as the natural boundary line of the 
two territories. The Moor was a child of the 
sun. If the stubborn Goth chose to sulk, up 
among the chilly heights and on the bleak 
plains of the north, he might do so, and it was 
little matter if one Alfonso called himself 
" King of the Asturians," in that mountain- 
defended and sea-girt province. The fertile 
plains of Andalusia, and the banks of the 
Tagus and Guadalquivir, were all of Spain the 
Moor wanted for the wonderful kingdom 
which was to be the marvel of the Middle 
Ages. 



CHAPTER X. 

But, at the early period we are considering, 
the " Christian kingdom " was composed of a 
handful of men and women who had fled from 
the Moslems to the mountains of the 
Asturias. Its one stronghold was the cave of 
Covadonga, where Pelagius, or Pelayo, had 
gathered thirty men and ten women. Here, 
in the dark recesses of this cave, — which was 
approached through a long and narrow moun- 
tain pass, and entered by a ladder of ninety 
steps, — was the germ of the future kingdoms 
of Castile and Aragon, and also of the down- 
fall of the Moor. An Arab historian said 
later: " Would to God the Moslems had ex- 
tinguished that spark which w^as destined to 
consume the dominion of Islam in the north " 
and, he might have added, '* in Spain.'' 

When Alfonso of Cantabria married the 
daughter of Pelayo in 751, the cave of Cova- 
donga no longer held the insurgent band. He 
roused all the northern provinces against the 
Moors and gathered an army which drove 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 65 

them step by step further south, until he had 
pushed the Christian frontier as far as the 
great Sierra, so that the one-time Visigoth 
capital of Toledo marked the line of the Mos- 
lem border fortresses. Too scanty in num- 
bers and too poor in purse to occupy the 
territory, Alfonso and his army then retreated 
to their mountains, there to enjoy the empty 
satisfaction of their conquest. 

But the Moors in Andalusia had toO' many 
troubles of their own at that time to give 
much heed to Alfonso I. and his rebellious 
band hiding in the mountains. The Berbers 
and the Arabs on the African coast were jeal- 
ous and antagonistic; the one was devout, 
credulous, and emotional; the other cool, 
crafty, and diplomatic. Suddenly the long- 
slumbering hatred burst into open revolt, and 
the Khalif sent thirty thousand Syrians to put 
down a formidable revolution in his African 
dominions. 

In full sympathy with their kinsmen across 
the sea, the Moors in Spain began to realize 
that while that land had been won by twelve 
thousand Berbers, led by one Berber general, 
that the lion's share of the spoils had gone to 
the Arabs, who were carrying things with a 



66 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

high hand! There were signs of a general up- 
rising, in concert with the revolution in 
Africa; and it looked as if the new territory 
was to be given up to anarchy; when suddenly 
all was changed. 

The Khalif, who was the head of all the 
Mahommedan empire, was supposed, to be the 
supreme ruler in spiritual and temporal 
affairs. But as his empire extended to such 
vast dimensions, he was obliged to delegate 
much of his temporal authority to others; so 
gradually it had become somewhat like that of 
the Pope. He was the supreme spiritual 
head, and only nominally supreme in affairs of 
state. 

The family of Omeyyad had given fourteen 
Khalif s to the Mahommedan empire from 66 1 
to 750; at which time the then reigning 
Omeyyad was deposed, and the second 
dynasty of Khalif s commenced, called Abba- 
side, after Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet. 

Abd-er-Rahman was a Prince belonging to 
the deposed family of the Omeyyads. He 
was the only one of his family who escaped the 
exterminating fury of the Abbasides. There 
was no future for him in the east, so the 
•thoughts of the ambitious youth turned to 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN'. 67 

the west — to the newly won territory of 
Spain. 

The coming of this last survivor of the 
Omeyyads to Andalusia is one of the ro- 
mances of history, and v/as not unlike the 
coming of another young Pretender to Scot- 
land, one thousand years later. It aroused 
the same wild enthusiasm, and as if by magic 
an army gathered about him, to meet the 
army of the Governor, Yusuf, which would 
resist him. Victory declared itself for the 
Prince, and he entered Cordova in triumph. 
Before the year had expired the dynasty of the 
Omeyyads — which was to stand for three 
centuries — was finally established, and its first 
king — ^Abd-er-Rahman — reigned at Cordova. 

His hereditary enemies the Abbasides fol- 
lowed him to Spain, and found supporters 
among the disaffected. But it was in vain. 
The Abbaside army of invasion was utterly 
annihilated; and the qualities slumbering in 
this son of the Khalifs may be judged when 
we relate that the heads of the Abbaside 
leaders were put into a bag with descriptive 
labels attached to their ears, and sent to the 
reigning Khalif as a present. 

This little incident does not seem to have 



6S A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

injured him in the estimation of Mansur, the 
new Khalif, who said of him : " Wonder- 
ful is this man! Such daring, wisdom, pru- 
dence! To throw himself into a distant land; 
to profit by the jealousies of the people; 
to turn their arms against one another instead 
of against himself; to win homage and obedi- 
ence through such difficulties; and to rule 
supreme — lord of all! Of a truth there is not 
such another man!" Abd-er-Rahman (the 
Sultan, as he was called) merited this praise. 
He knew when to be cruel and when to show 
mercy; and how to hold scheming Arab chiefs, 
fierce, jealous Berbers, and vanquished Chris- 
tians, and could placate or crucify as the con- 
ditions required. 



CHAPTER XL 

Charlemagne was at this time building 
up his colossal empire. His Christian soul was 
mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom 
set up in Andalusia; and when, in jjy, the 
Saracen governor and two other Arab chiefs 
appealed to him for aid against the Omeyyad 
usurper, Abd-er-Rahman, he eagerly re- 
sponded. His grandfather Charles Martel 
had driven these infidels back over the Pyren- 
ees; now he would drive them out of Spain, 
and reclaim that land for Christianity! 

His army never reached farther than Sara- 
gossa. He was recalled to France by a revolt 
of the recently conquered Saxons, and the 
" Battle of Roncesvalles " is the historic 
monument of the ill-starred attempt. The 
battle in itself was insignificant. No action 
of such small importance has ever been in- 
vested with such a glamour of romance, 
nor the theme of so much legend and 
poetry. It has been called the Ther- 



70 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

mopylse of the Pyrenees, because of the 
personal valor displayed, and the tragic 
death of the two great Paladins (as the 
twelve Peers of Charlemagne were called) 
Roland and Olivier. The Chanson de Roland 
was one of the famous ballads in the early 
Hterature of Europe, and Roland and Olivier 
were to French and Spanish minstrelsy what 
the knights of King Arthur ^\ ere to the Eng- 
lish. 

The simple story about which so much has 
been written and sung is this: As the retreat- 
ing army of Charlemagne was crossing the 
Pyrenees, the rear of the army under Roland 
and Olivier was ambuscaded in the narrow 
pass of Roncesvalles by the Basques and ex- 
terminated to a man. 

These Basques were the unconquerable 
mountain tribe of which we heard so much in 
the early history of Spain. They had been on 
guard for centuries, keeping the Franks back 
from the Pyrenees. They may have been act- 
ing under Saracenic influence when they ex- 
terminated the rear-guard of Charlemagne's 
army. But it was done, not because they 
loved the Saracen, but because they had a 
hereditary hatred for the Franks. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 11 

Mediaeval Europe never tired of hearing of 
the Great Charles* lament over his Roland: 
'' O thou right arm of my kingdom, — de- 
fender of the Christians, — scourge of the 
Saracens! How can I behold thee dead, and 
not die myself! Thou art exalted to the 
heavenly kingdom, — and I am left alone, a 
poor miserable King! " 



CHAPTER XII. 

The tide which had flowed over southern 
Spain was a singular mixture of reUgious fer- 
vor, of brutish humanity, and refinements of 
wisdom and wickedness. No stranger and 
more composite elements were ever thrown 
together. Permanence and peace were im- 
possible. Nothing but force could hold to- 
gether elements so incongruous and antago- 
nistic. As soon as the hand of Abd-er-Rah- 
man I. was removed disintegration began. 
Clashing races, clans, and political parties had 
in a few years made such havoc that it seemed 
as if the Omeyyad dynasty was crumbling. 

It might have been an Arab who said *' he 
cared not who made the laws of his country, 
so he could write its songs." Learning, litera- 
ture, refinements of luxury and of art had 
taken possession of the land, which seemed 
given up to the muses. When in 822 Abd- 
er-Rahman II. reigned, he did not trouble 
himself about the laws of his crumbling em- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 73 

pire. The one man in whom he delighted was 
Ziryab. What Petronius was to Nero,* and 
Beau Brummel to George IV., that was 
Ziryab to the Sultan Abd-er-Rahman IL, the 
elegant arbiter in matters of taste. From the 
dishes which should be eaten to the clothes 
which should be worn, he was the supreme 
judge; while at the same time he knew by 
heart and could " like an angel sing " one 
thousand songs to his adoring Sultan. 

Even the Gothic Christians were seduced 
by these alluring refinements. They felt con- 
tempt for their old Latin speech and for their 
literature, with the tiresome asceticism it 
eternally preached. The Christian ideal had 
grown to be one of penance and mortification 
of the flesh, and to a few ardent souls these 
sensuous delights were an open highway to 
death eternal. Euloghis became the leader of 
this band of zealots. In lamenting the deca- 
dence of his people, he wrote, " hardly one in 
a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and 
yet they indite excellent Arabic verse! " 
Filled with despairing ardor this man aroused 
a few kindred spirits to join him in a desper- 

*See"QuoVadis?" 



74 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

ate attempt to awaken the benumbed con- 
science of the Christians. They could not get 
the Moslems to persecute them, but they 
might attain martyrdom by cursing the 
Prophet; then the infidels, however reluctant, 
would be compelled to behead them. This 
they did, and one by one perished, to no pur- 
pose. The Gothic Christians were not con- 
science-stricken as Eulogius supposed they 
would be, and there was no general uprising 
for the Christian faith. 

In 912 the threatened ruin of the dynasty 
was arrested by the coming of another Abd- 
er-Rahman, third Sultan of that name. Rebel- 
lion was put down, and fifty years of wise and 
just administration gave solidity to the king- 
dom, which also then became a Khalifate. 

The Abbaside Khalifs, after the deposition 
of the Omeyyads, had removed the Khalifate 
from Damascus to Baghdad. But the empire 
had extended too far west to revolve about 
that distant pivot. Abd-er-Rahman — perhaps 
remembering the old feud between his fam- 
ily and the Abbasides — determined to as- 
sume the spiritual headship of the western part 
of the empire. And thereafter, the Mahom- 
medan empire — like the Roman — had two 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 75 

heads, an Eastern Khalif at Baghdad, and a 
Western Khalif at Cordova. 

While thus extending his own power the 
Khalif was extinguishing every spark of re- 
bellion in the south and driving the rebellious 
Christians back in the north, and at the same 
time he was clothing Cordova with a splendor 
which amazed and dazzled even the Eastern 
Princes who came to pay court to the great 
Khalif. His emissaries were everywhere col- 
lecting books for his library and treasure for 
his palaces. Cordova became the abode of 
learning, and the nursery for science, philoso- 
phy, and art, transplanted from Asia. The im- 
agination and the pen of an arab poet could 
not have overdrawn this wonderful city on the 
Guadalquivir,^ — with its palaces, its gardens, 
and fountains, — its 50,000 houses of the aris- 
tocracy, — its 700 mosques, — and 900 public 
baths, — all adorned with color and carvings 
and tracery beautiful as a dream of Paradise. 
One hears with amazement ol the great 
mosque, with its 19 arcades, its pavings of 
silver and rich mosaics, its 1293 clustered 
columns, inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli, the 
clusters reaching up to the slender arches 
which supported the roof; the Avhole of this 



76 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

marvelous scene lighted by countless brazen 
lamps made from Christian bells, while 
hundreds of attendants swung censers, filling 
the air with perfume. 

After the ravages of a thousand years trav- 
elers stand amazed to-day before the forest of 
columns which open out in endless vistas in 
the splendid ruin, calling up visions of 
the vanished glories of Cordova and the Great 
Khalif. 

There is not time to tell of the city this 
Spanish Khalif built for his favorite wife, 
" The Fairest," and which he called "' Hill of 
the Bride," upon which for fifteen years ten 
thousand men worked daily; nor of the four 
thousand columns which adorned its palaces, 
presents from emperors and potentates in 
Constantinople, Rome, and far-off Eastern 
states; nor of the ivory and ebony doors, 
studded with jewels, through which shone the 
sun, the light then falling on the lake of quick- 
silver, which sent back blinding, quivering 
flashes into dazzled eyes. And we are told of 
the thirteen thousand male servants who min- 
istered in this palace of delight. All this, too, 
at a time when our Saxon ancestors were liv- 
ing in dwellings without chimnejs^ and cast- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN'. 77 

ing the bones from the table at which they 
feasted into the foul straw which covered their 
floors; when a Gothic night had settled 
upon Europe, and blotted out civilization so 
completely that only in a part of Italy, and 
around Constantinople, did there remain a 
vestige of refinement! 

It is said that when the embassy from' Con- 
stantinople came bearing a letter to the Kha- 
lif, the courtier whose duty it was to read it 
was so awed by all this splendor that he 
fainted ! 

And yet the owner and creator of this fabu- 
lous luxury, — Sultan and Khalif of a dominion 
the greatest of his time, and wath " The Fair- 
est " for his adored wife, — when he came to 
die, left a paper upon w^hich he had written 
that he could only recall fourteen days in 
which he had been happy. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

In the north there was developing another 
and very different power. The descendants 
of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause 
with the rough mountaineers, had shared all 
their hardships and rigors in the mountains of 
the Asturias. Inured to privation and suf- 
fering, entirely unacquainted with luxury or 
even with the comforts of living, they had 
grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso 
I. had emerged from their mountain shelter 
and removed their court and capital from 
Oviedo to Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway 
over a group of barren kingdoms, poor, 
proud, but with Hidalgos and Dons, who were 
keeping alive the sacred fires of patriotism and 
of religion. This was the rough cradle of a 
Spanish nationality. 

They had their own jealousies and fierce 

conflicts, but all united in a common hatred 

of the Moor. Though they did not yet 

dream of driving him out of their land, their 

78 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN: 79 

brave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordono I. 
had been for years steadily defying and tor- 
menting him with the kind of warfare to 
which they gave its name — guerrilla — mean- 
ing" little wars." 

While the Great Khalif was consolidating 
, his Moorish kingdom and driving the Chris- 
tians back into their mountains, the power of 
that people was being weakened by internal 
strifes existing between the three adjacent 
kingdoms — Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The 
headship of Leon was for years disputed by 
her ambitious neighbor Castile (so called be- 
cause of the numerous fortified castles with 
which it was studded), under the leadership 
of one Fernando, Count of Castile. 

There had been the usual lapse into anarchy 
and weakness after the Great Khalif 's death. 
Andalusia always needed a master, and this 
she found in Alman::or, who was Prime Min- 
ister to one of the Khalif's feeble descendants. 
It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom 
in the north when this all-subduing man took 
the reins in his own hands, and left his young 
master to amuse himself in collecting rare 
manuscripts and making Cordova more beau- 
tiful. 



8o A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

This Almanzor, the mightiest of the sol- 
diers of the Crescent since Tarik and Musa, 
proclai^ned a war of faith against the Chris- 
tians, who were obliged to forget their local 
dissensions and to try with their com- 
bined strength to save their kingdom from ex- 
termination. These were the darkest days to 
which they had yet been subjected. But for 
the death of Almanzor the ruin of the Chris- 
tian state would have been complete. A 
monkish historian thus records this wel- 
come event: " In 1002 died Almanzor, and 
was buried in hell.'* 

The death of Almanzor was the turning 
point in the fortunes of the two kingdoms — 
that of the Moors and of the Christians. 

The magnificence and the glory of the 
kingdom faded like the mist before the morn- 
ing sun. Never again would Cordova be 
called the " Bride of Andalusia." Eight years 
after the death of Almanzor anarchy and ruin 
reigned in that city. The gentle, studious 
youth who was Khalif, was dragged with his 
only child to a dismal vault attached to the 
great mosque; and here, in darkness and cold 
and damp, sat the grandson of the first Great 
Khalif, his child clinging to his breast and 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 8 1 

begging in vain for food, his wretched father 
pathetically pleading with his jailers for just 
a crust of bread, and a candle to reUeve the 
awful darkness. 

The brutal Berbers now had their turn. The 
priceless library, with its six hundred thou- 
sand volumes, was in ashes. They were in 
the " City of the Fairest." Palace after palace 
was ransacked, and in a few days all that 
remained of its exquisite treasures of art 
was a heap of blackened stones (loio). The 
Christians drew their broken state closer to- 
gether, and gathered themselves for a more 
aggressive warfare than any yet undertaken. 
The time when the Moors were in the throes 
of civil war was favorable. The three king- 
doms of Asturias, Leon, and Castile were in 
1073 united into one " kingdom of Castile," 
under xA.lfonso VL, w^ho had already made 
great inroads upon the Moslem territory and 
laid many cities under tribute. With this 
event, the name Castilian comes into Spanish 
history, and from thenceforth that name rep- 
resents all that is proudest, bravest, and most 
characteristic of the part of the race which 
traces a direct lineage from the ancient Visi- 
goth Kings. 



S2 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Alfonso had not misjudged his opportunity. 
He had traversed Spain with his army, and 
bathed in the ocean in sight of the " Pillars of 
Hercules." His great general Rodrigo Diaz, 
known as " My Cid, the Challenger," had cut 
another path all the way to Valencia, where 
he reigned as a sort of uncrowned king; and 
he will forever reign as crowned king in the 
realm of romance and poetry; the perfect em- 
bodiment of the knightly idea — the " Chal- 
lenger," who, in defense of the faith, would 
stand before great armies and defy them to 
single combat! Whether ''My Cid" ever 
did such mighty deeds as are ascribed to him, 
no one knows. But he stands for the highest 
ideal of his time. He was the " King Ar- 
thur " of Spanish history; and so valiantly did 
he serve the Christian cause that the Moors 
were driven to a most disastrous step. With 
the Cid in Valencia, with Alfonso VI. march- 
ing a victorious army through the Moslem 
territory, and with Toledo, the city of the 
ancient Visigoth Kings, repossessed, it looked 
as if, after almost four hundred years, the 
Christians were about to recover their 
land. 

The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realiz- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 83 

ing how helpless they had grown, resolved 
upon a desperate measure. 

There was, on the opposite African coast, 
a sect of Berber fanatics, fierce and devout, 
known as '' saints," but which the Moors 
called Almoravides. Fighting for the faith 
was their occupation. What more fitting 
than to use them as a means of driving the in- 
fidel Christians out of Moslem territory! 

They came, like a cloud of locusts, and set- 
tled upon the land. Yusuf, their general, led 
his men against Alfonso's Castilians October 
23, 1086. Near Badajos the attack was made 
simultaneously in front and rear, crushing 
them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with 
five hundred men. This was only the first of 
many other crushing defeats; the most dis- 
heartening of which was the one in 1099, when 
the Cid, fighting in alliance with Pedro, King 
of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the 
seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart 
broke, and he died; and we are told he was 
clothed cap-a-pie in shining armor and placed 
upright on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty 
sword in his hand — and so he passed to his 
burial; his banner borne and guarded by five 
hundred knights. And we are also told the 



84 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Moors wonderingly watched his departure 
with his knights, not suspecting that he was 
dead. 

The object of the Moors in inviting the 
odious Almoravides had been accompHshed; 
the Christians had been driven out of Anda- 
lusia back into their own territor}^; but their 
African auxiHaries were too well pleased with 
their new abode to think of leaving it. One 
by one the Moorish Princes wxre subdued by 
the men whose aid they had invoked, until a 
dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon 
Spain. To the refined Spanish Arabs con- 
tact with these savages from the desert was a 
terrible scourge, and so far as they were able 
they withdrew into communities by them- 
selves, leaving these African locusts to devour 
their substance and dim their glory. 

But luxury was not favorable to the invad- 
ers. In another generation their martial 
spirit was gone and they had become only 
ignorant, sodden voluptuaries; and when the 
Christians once more renewed their attacks, 
they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done 
thirty years before. 

There was another fanatical sect, be- 
yond the Atlas range in Africa, which had 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-. 85 

long been looking for a coming Messiah, 
whom they called the Mahdi. They were 
known as the Alhomades. A son of a lamp- 
lighter in the Mosque of Cordova one day pre- 
sented himself before the Alhomades, and an- 
nounced that he was the great Mahdi, who was 
divinely appointed to lead them, and to bring 
happiness to all the earth. 

The path this Mahdi desired to lead them 
was first to Morocco, there to subdue the Al- 
moravides in their own land, and thence to 
Spain. In a short time this entire plan was 
realized. The Mahdi's successor was Emperor 
of Morocco, and by the year 11 50 included in 
his dominion was all of Mahommedan Spain! 
The Spanish Arabs, when they were fighting 
Alfonso VI. and the " Cid," did not antici- 
pate this disgraceful downfall from people of 
their own faith. They abhorred these Ma- 
hommedan savages, and drew together still 
closer for a century more in and about their 
chosen refuge of Granada. 

In the early part of the thirteenth century 
the Emperor of Morocco made such enor- 
mous preparations for the occupation of Spain 
that a larger design upon Europe became 
manifest. Once more Christendom was 



86 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

alarmed; not since Charles Martel had the 
danger appeared so great. The Pope pro- 
claimed a Crusade, this time not into Pales- 
tine, but Spain. 

An army of volunteers from the kingdom of 
Portugal and from southern France re-en- 
forced the great armies of the Kings of Cas- 
tile, Aragon, and Navarre. The Crusaders, as 
they called themselves, assembled at Toledo 
July 12, I2I2, under the command of Alfonso 
IX., King of Castile. The power of the Al- 
homades was broken, and they were driven 
out of Spain. The once great Mahommedan 
Empire in that country was reduced to the 
single province of Granada, where the Moors 
intrenched themselves in their last stronghold. 
For nearly three centuries the Crescent was 
yet to wave over the kingdom of Granada; 
but it was tO' shine in only the pale light of a 
waning crescent, until its final extinction in 
the full light of a Christian day. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

A GREAT change had been wrought in 
Etirope. The Crusades had opened a channel 
through which flowed from the East reviving 
streams of ancient knowledge and culture 
over the arid waste of mediaevalism. France 
and England had awakened from their long 
mental torpor, Paris was become the center of 
an intellectual revival. In England, Roger 
Bacon, in his '' Opus Majus," was system- 
atizing all existing knowledge and laying a 
foundation for a more advanced science and 
philosophy for the people, who had only 
recently extorted from their wicked King 
John the great charter of their liberties. 

It was just at this period, when the door had 
suddenly opened ushering Europe into a new 
life, that the Christian cause in Spain tri- 
umphed; and, excepting in the little kingdom 
of Granada, the Cross waved from the Pyre- 
nees to the sea. After more than four cen- 
turies of steadfast devotion to that object, the 
87 



88 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

descendants of the Visigoth Kings had come 
once more into their inheritance. 

They found it enriched, and clothed with a 
beauty of which their ancestors could never 
have dreamed. These Spaniards had learned 
their lesson of valor in the north, and they 
had learned it well. Now in the land of the 
Moor, dwelling in the palaces they had built, 
and gazing upon masterpieces of Arabic art 
and architecture which they had left, they 
were to learn the subtle charm of form and 
color, and the fascination which music and 
poetry and beauty and knowledge may lend 
to life. As they drank from these Moorish 
fountains the rugged warriors found them 
very sweet; and they discovered that there 
were other pleasures in life beside fighting the 
Moors and nursing memories of the Cid and 
their vanished heroes. 

The territory of Fernando III., King of Cas- 
tile (1230-52), extended now from the Bay of 
Biscay to the Guadalquivir. The ancient city 
of Seville was chosen as his capital. It was a 
far cry from the " Cave of Covadonga " 
to the Moorish palace of the " Alcazar," where 
dwelt the pious descendant of Pelayo! The 
first act of Fernando III. was to convert the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 89 

Mosque at Seville into a cathedral, which 
still stands with its Moorish bell-tower, the 
beautiful " Giralda." There may also be seen 
to-day over one of its portals a stuffed croco- 
dile, which was sent alive to King Ferdinand 
by the Sultan of Egypt. And within the 
cathedral, in a silver urn with glass sides, the 
traveler may also gaze to-day upon the re- 
mains of this '' Saint Ferdinand " clothed in 
royal robes, and with a crown upon his head. 
Spain had begun to lift up her head among 
the other nations of Europe. To defeat the 
Crescent was the highest ideal of that chival- 
ric age. Spain, longer than any other nation, 
had fought the Mahommedan. It had been 
her sole occupation for four centuries, and 
now she had vanquished him, and driven 
him into the mountains of one of her 
smallest provinces, there to hide from the 
Spaniards as they had once hidden from the 
Moors in the North. This was a pass- 
port to the honor and respect of other Chris- 
tian nations. She was Spain " the Catholic " 
— the loved and favorite child of the 
Church — and great monarchs in England, 
France, and Germany bestowed their sons and 
daughters upon her kings and princes. Poor 



9© A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

though she was in purse, and somewhat rude 
yet in manners, she held up her head high in 
proud consciousness of her aristocratic line- 
age, and her unmatched championship of 
Christianity. 

We reahze how close had become the tie 
binding her to other nations when we learn 
that King Fernando III. was the grandson, 
of Queen Eleanor of England (daughter of 
Henry II.), and that Louis IX. of France, 
that other royal saint, was his own cousin; 
and also that his wife Beatrix, whom he 
brought with him to Seville, was daughter 
of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany. 

The deep hold which Arabic life and 
thought had taken upon their conquerors was 
shown when Alfonso X., son of Ferdinand, 
came to the throne. So in love was he with 
learning and science that he let his kingdom 
fall into utter confusion while he busied him- 
self with a set of astronomical tables upon 
which his heart was set and in holding up to 
ridicule the Ptolemaic theory. If he had 
given less thought to the stars, and more to 
the humble question as to who was to be his 
successor, it would have saved much strife and 
suffering to those who came after him. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 91 

While the Moslems were building up their 
kingdom and making of their capital city a 
second and even more beautiful Cordova, there 
was a partial truce with the Moors in Granada. 
Moors and Christians were enemies still; the 
hereditary hatreds were only lulled into tem- 
porary repose. But Christian knights who 
were handsome and gallant might love and 
woo Moorish maidens who were beautiful; 
and, as a writer has intimated, love became 
the business and war the pastime of the Span- 
iard in Andalusia. Spain was unconsciously 
inbibing the soft, sensuous charm of the civili- 
zation she was exterminating; and the peculiar 
rhythm of Spanish music, and the subtle 
picturesqueness which makes the Spanish peo- 
ple unique among the other Latin nations of 
Europe, carne, not from her Gothic, nor her 
Roman, nor her Phenician ancestry, but from 
the plains of Arabia; and the guitar and the 
dance and the castanet, and the charm and 
the coquetry of her women, are echoes from 
that far-off land of poetry and romance. Not 
so the bull-fight! Would you trace to its 
source that pleasant pastime, you must not 
go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man, 
but not to beast. He would have abhorred 



92 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

such a form of amusement, for the origin of 
which we must look to the barbarous Kelt; 
or perhaps, as is more probable, to the mys- 
terious Iberians, since among the Latin peo- 
ples of Europe bull-fighting is found in Spain 
alone. Well was it for Spain that her rough, 
untutored ancestors were kept hiding in the 
mountains for centuries, while that brilliant 
Oriental race planted their Peninsula thick 
with the germs of high thinking and beau- 
tiful living. 

As the spider, after his glistening habitation 
has been destroyed by some ruthless footstep, 
goes patiently to work to rebuild it, so the 
Moor in Granada, with his imperishable in- 
stinct for beauty, was making of his little king- 
dom the most beautiful spot in Europe. The 
city of Granada was lovelier than Cordova; 
its Alhambra more enchanting than had been 
the palaces in the "' City of the Fairest." 
This citadel, which is fortress and palace in 
one, still stands like the Acropolis, looking 
out upon the plain from its lofty elevation. 
Volumes have been written about its laby- 
rinthine halls and corridors and courts, and 
the amazing richness of decoration, which still 
survives — an inexhaustible mine for artists 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 9^ 

and a shrine for lovers of the beautiful. But 
Granada cultivated other things besides the 
art of beauty. Nowhere in Europe was there 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such 
advanced thinking, and a knowledge so akin 
to our own to-day, as within the borders of 
that Moorish kingdom. 



CHAPTER XV. 

There were other reasons beside the grow- 
ing peacefulness of the Spaniards why Gra- 
nada was left to develop in comparative secu- 
rity for two centuries. It was impossible that 
adjacent ambitious kingdoms, such as Na- 
varre, Castile, Aragon, Leon, and Portugal, 
with indefinite and disputed boundaries, and, 
on account of intermarriages between the 
kingdoms, with indefinite and disputed suc- 
cessions, should ever be at peace. In the 
perpetual strife and warfare which prevailed 
on account of royal European alliances, the 
fate of foreign princes and princesses were 
often involved, and hence European states 
stood ready to take a hand. 

Castile and Aragon had gradually absorbed 
the smaller states, excepting Portugal on the 
one side and Navarre on the other. The his- 
tory of Spain at this time is a history of the 
struggles of these two states for supremacy. 
The most eventful as well as the most lurid 



J SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 95 

period of this prolonged civil war was while 
Pedro the Cruel was king of Castile, 1350- 
69. This Spanish Nero, when sixteen years 
old, commenced his reign by the murder of 
his mother. A catalogue of his crimes is im- 
possible. Enough to say that assassination 
was his remedy, and means of escape, from 
every entanglement in which his treacheries 
involved him. It was the unhappy fate of 
Blanche de Bourbon, sister of Charles V., 
King of France, to marry this King of Castile, 
and when he refused to live with her and had 
her removed from his palace the Alcazar to a 
fortress, and finally poisoned her, the French 
King determined to avenge the insult to his 
royal house. He allied himself with the King 
of Aragon to destroy Pedro, with whom the 
King of Aragon was of course at war. 

Edward, the " Black Prince," was then 
brilliantly invading France and extending the 
kingdom of his father Edward III. He was 
the kinsman of Pedro, and when appealed to 
by his cousin for aid in protecting his king- 
dom from the King of Aragon and his French 
allies, Edward gallantly consented to help 
him; and in the spring of 1367, for the second 
time, a splendid army advanced through the 



96 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Pass at Roncesvalles, and a great battle, 
worthy of a better cause, was fought and 
won. 

So this most atrocious king— perhaps ex- 
cepting Richard III. of England, whom he 
resembled — had for his champion the victor of 
Cressy and Poictiers. He was restored to his 
throne, which had been usurped by his brother 
Enrique (or Henry), but in a personal en- 
counter with Enrique soon after (which was 
artfully brought about by the famous Breton 
knight, Bertrand du Guesclin), he met a de- 
served fate (1369). 

Constanza, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, 
had been married to John of Gaunt (Duke of 
Lancester), brother of the Black Prince and 
son of Edward HI. As Constanza was the 
great-grandmother of Isabella I. of Spain, so 
in the veins of that revered Queen there 
flowed the blood of the Plantagenets, as well 
as that of Pedro the Cruel! 

Because of the number of doubtful pretend- 
ers always existing in Spain, disputes about 
the royal succession also always existed. 
Such a dispute now led to a long war with 
Portugal, where King Fernando had really the 
most valid hereditary claim to the throne 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPA IX. 97 

made vacant by Pedro's death. If his right 
had been acknowledged, Portugal and Spain 
would now be united; Isabella would have re- 
mained only a poor and devout princess, and 
would never have had the power to win a con- 
tinent for the world. So impossible is it to 
remove one of the links forged by fate, that 
we dare not regret even so monstrous a reign 
as that of Pedro the Cruel ! 

Enrique's right to the vacant throne of his 
brother had two disputants. Besides the 
King of Portugal, John of Gaunt, who had 
married the lady Constanza, — by virtue of her 
rights as daughter of Pedro, — claimed the 
crown of Castile. This Plantagenet was actu- 
ally proclaimed King of Castile and Leon 
(1386). For twenty-five years he vainly 
strove to come into his kingdom as sovereign ; 
but finally compromised by giving his young 
daughter Catherine to the boy " Prince of 
Asturias," the heir to the throne. He was 
obliged to content himself by thus securing to 
his child the long-coveted prize. And it was 
this Catherine, who at fourteen was betrothed 
to a boy of nine, who was the grandmother of 
Isabella, Queen of Castile. 

When such was the private history of those 



98 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

highest in the land we can only imagine 
what must have been that of the rest. Feud- 
aHsm, which was a part of Spain's Gothic in- 
heritance, had always made that country one 
of its strongholds, and chivalry had nowhere 
else found so congenial a soil. There was no 
great artisan class, as in France, creating a 
powerful " bourgeoisie "; no " guilds," or sim- 
ple " burghers," as in Germany, stubbornly 
standing for their rights; no *' boroughs " and 
" town meetings," where the people were 
sternly guarding their liberties, as in England. 
The history of other nations is that of the 
struggles of the common people against the 
tyranny of kings and rulers. If there were 
any " common people " in Spain, they were 
so effaced that history makes no mention of 
them. We hear only of kings and great 
barons and glorious knights; and their won- 
derful deeds and their valor and prowess — ex- 
cepting in the wars with the Moors — were 
always over boundary-lines and successions, 
or personal quarrels more or less disgraceful, 
with never a single high purpose or a principle 
involved. It was all a gay, ambitious pageant, 
adorned by a mantle of chivalry, and made 
sacred by the banner of the Cross. In the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-. 99 

history of no other European country do we 
see a great state develop under despotism so 
unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so un- 
mitigated and unrestrained by gentle human 
impulses. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Juan 11. , the son of the young Catherine and 
the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454, 
and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King 
of Castile. When, after some years, Henry 
was without children, and with health very in- 
firm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly 
found herself the acknowledged heir to the 
throne of Castile. She suddenly became a 
very important young person. The old King 
of Portugal was a suitor for her hand, 
and a brother of the King of Eng- 
land, and also a brother of the King of 
France, were striving for the same honor. 
But Isabella had very decided views of her 
own. Her hero was the young Ferdinand of 
Aragon, and heir to that throne. She resisted 
all her brother's efforts to coerce her, and 
finally took the matter into her own hands by 
sending an envoy to her handsome young 
lover to come to her at Valladolid, with a 
letter telling him they had better be married 
at once. 



A SHORT HIStORV OF SPAIN. 10 i 

Accompanied by a few knights disguised as 
merchants, Ferdinand, pretending to be their 
servant, during the entire journey waited 
on them at table and took care of their mules. 
He entered Valladolid, where he was received 
by the Archbishop of Toledo, who was in the 
conspiracy, and was by him conveyed to Isa- 
bella's apartments. We are told that when he 
entered someone exclaimed: Ese-es, Ese-es 
(that is he) ; and the escutcheon of the descend- 
ants of that knight has ever since borne a dou- 
ble ^. S., which sounds like this exclamation. 

The marriage was arranged to take place in 
four days. An embarrassment then occurred 
of which no one had before thought. Neither 
of them had any money. But someone was 
found who would lend them enough for the 
wedding expenses, and so on the 19th of 
October, 1469, the most important marriage 
ever yet consummated in Spain took place — a 
marriage which would forever set at rest the 
rivalries between Castile and Aragon, and 
bring honors undreamed of to a united Spain. 

Isabella was fair, intelligent, accomplished, 
and lovely. She was eighteen and her boy 
husband was a year younger. Of course her 
royal brother stormed and raged. But, of 



I02 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAW. 

course, it did no good. In five years from 
that time (1474) he died, and Isabella, royally 
attired, and seated on a white palfrey, pro- 
ceeded to the throne prepared for her, and 
was there proclaimed " Queen of Castile." 
At the end of another five years, Ferdinand 
came into his inheritance. His old father, 
Juan II., King of Aragon and Navarre, died 
in 1479, and Castile, Aragon, and Navarre — 
all of Spain except Portugal and Granada — 
had come under the double crown of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella. 

The war with Portugal still existed, and 
their reign began in the midst of confusion 
and trouble, but it was brilliant from the out- 
set. Ferdinand had great abilities and an 
ambition which matched his abilities. Isa- 
bella, no less ambitious than he, was more far- 
reaching in her plans, and always saw more 
clearly than Ferdinand what was for the true 
glory of Spain. With infinite tact she soft- 
ened his asperities, and disarmed his jeal- 
ousy, and ruled her '' dear lord," by making 
him believe he ruled her. 

A joint sovereignty, with a man so grasping 
of power and so jealous of his own rights, re- 
quired self-control and tact in no ordinary 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 103 

measure. It was agreed at last that in all pub- 
lic acts Ferdinand's name should precede hers; 
and although her sanction was necessary, his 
indignation at this was abated by her promise 
of submission to his will. The court of the 
new sovereigns w^as established at Seville, and 
they took up their abode in that palace so 
filled with associations both Moorish and 
Castilian — the Alcazar. From the very first 
Isabella's powerful mind grappled every pub- 
lic question, and she gave herself heart and 
soul to what she believed was her divine mis- 
sion — the building up of a great Catholic state. 
Isabella's devout soul was sorely troubled 
by the prevalence of Judaism in her king- 
dom. She took counsel with her confessor, 
and also with the Pope, and by their advice a 
religious tribunal was established at Seville in 
1483, the object of which was to inquire of 
heretics whether they were willing to re- 
nounce their faith and accept Christianity. 
The head of this tribunal, which was soon fol- 
lowed by others in all the large cites, was a 
Dominican friar called Torquemada. He was 
known as the " Inquisitor General." Inac- 
cessible to pity, mild in manners, humble in 
demeanor, yet swayed only by a sense of 



io4 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAW. 

duty, this strange being was so cruel that he 
seems like an incarnation of the evil principle. 
At the tribunal in Seville alone it is said that 
in thirty-six years four thousand victims were 
consigned to the flames, besides the thousands 
more who endured living deaths by torture, 
mutilation, and nameless sufferings. 

Humanity shudders at the recital! And 
yet this monstrous tribunal was the creation of 
one of the wisest and gentlest of women, who 
believed no rigors could be too great to save 
people from eternal death ! And, in her mis- 
guided zeal, she emptied her kingdom of a peo- 
ple who had helped to create its prosperity, 
and drove the most valuable part of her popu- 
lation into France, Italy, and England, there 
to disseminate the seeds of a higher culture 
and intelligence which they had imbibed from 
contact with the Moors, who had treated them 
with such uniform tolerance and gentleness. 

The kingdom of Granada was now at the 
height of its splendor. Its capital city was 
larger and richer than any city in Spain. Its 
army was the best equipped of any in Europe. 
The Moorish king, a man of fiery temper, 
thought the time had come when he 
might defy his enemy by refusing to 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 105 

pay an annual tribute to which his father 
had ten years before consented. When 
Ferdinand's messenger, in 1476, came to 
demand the accustomed tribute, he said, 
" Go tell your master the kings who 
pay tribute in Granada are all dead. Our 
mints coin nothing but sword-blades 
now." 

The cool and crafty Ferdinand prepared his 
own answer to this challenge. The infatuated 
King Abdul-Hassan followed up his insult 
by capturing the Christian fortress of Zahara. 
His temper was not at the best at this time on 
account of a war raging in his own household. 
His wife Ayesha was fiercely jealous of a 
Christian captive whom he had also made his 
wife. She had become his favorite Sultana, 
and was conspirmg to have her own son sup- 
plant Boabdil, the son of i\yesha, the heir to 
the throne. In his championship of Zoraya 
and her son, Abdul-Hassan imprisoned Aye- 
sha and Boabdil, whom he threatened to disin- 
herit. We are shown to-day the window in 
the Alhambra from which Ayesha lowered 
Boabdil in a basket, telling him to come back 
with an army and assert his rights. Sud- 
denly, while absorbed by this smaller war, 



io6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

news came that Alhama, their most im- 
pregnable fortress, only six leagues from the 
city of Granada, had been captured by 
Ferdinand's army. It was the key to Gra- 
nada. Despair was in every soul. The air was 
filled with wailing and lamentation. " Woe, 
woe is me, Alhama! " " Ay de mi, Alhama! " 
Indignant with their old king, who had 
brought destruction upon them, when Boab- 
dil came with his army of followers, they 
flocked about him— •" El Rey Chico!'' (the 
boy king) as they called him. Abdul Hassan 
was forced to fly, and Boabdil reigned over 
the expiring kingdom. It was a brief and 
troubled reign. 

In the famous '' Court of the Lions " in the 
Alhambra, visitors are shown to-day the 
blood-stains left by the celebrated massacre 
of the " Abencerrages." The Abencerrages 
had supported the claim of Ayesha's rival, 
Zoraya; and it is said that Boabdil invited the 
Princes of this clan, some thirty in number, 
to a friendly conference in the Alhambra, and 
there had them treacherously beheaded at the 
fountain. 

But whether this blood-stain upon his 
memory is as doubtful as those upon the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 107 

stones at the fountain, seems an open 
question. 

So stubborn was the defense, it appeared 
sometimes as if the reduction of Granada 
would have to be abandoned. Isabella's 
courage and faith were sorely tried. But the 
brave Queen infused her own courage 
into the flagging spirits of her hus- 
band, and kept alive the enthusiasm of the 
people; and at last, — on the 2d of January, 
1492, — the proud city capitulated. Boabdil 
surrendered the keys of the Alhambra to 
Ferdinand — the silver cross vv^hich had pre- 
ceded the King throughout the war gleamed 
from a high tower; and from the loftiest pin- 
nacle of the Alhambra waved the banners of 
Castile and Aragon. 

The conflict which had lasted for 781 years 
was over. The death of Roderick and the fall 
of the Goths was avenged, and Christendom, 
still weeping for the loss of Constantinople, 
was consoled and took heart again. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

The reduction of Granada had required 
eleven years, and had drained the kingdom of 
all its resources. It is not strange that Isa- 
bella should have had no time to listen seri- 
ously to a threadbare enthusiast asking for 
money and ships for a strange adventure ! To 
have grown old and haggard in pressing an 
unsuccessful project is not a passport to the 
confidence of Princes. But the gracious 
Queen had promised to listen to him when the 
war with the Moors was concluded. So 
now Columbus sought her out at Granada; 
and it is a strange scene which the imagination 
pictures — a shabby old man pleading with a 
Queen in the halls of the Alhambra for permis- 
sion to lift the veil from an unsuspected Hemi- 
sphere; artfully dwelling upon the glory of 
planting the Cross in the dominions of the 
Great Khan! The cool, unimaginative Ferdi- 
nand listened contemptuously; but Isabella, 
for once opposing the will of her " dear lord," 

To8 s 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 109 

arose and said, *' The enterprise is mine. I 
undertake it for Castile." And on the 3d of 
August, 1492, the Httle fleet of caravels sailed 
from the mouth of the same river whence had 
once sailed the " ships of Tarshish," laden 
with treasure for King Solomon and " Hiram, 
King of Tyre." A union with Portugal — the 
land of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius — was 
all that was now required to make of the Span- 
ish Peninsula one kingdom. This Isabella 
planned to accomplish by the marriage of her 
oldest daughter, Isabella, with the King of 
Portugal. Her son John, heir to the Spanish 
throne, had died suddenly just after his mar- 
riage with the daughter of Maximilian, Em- 
peror of Germany. 

This terrible blow was swiftly followed by 
another, the death of her daughter Isabella, 
and also that of the infant which was expected 
to unite the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. 
The succession of Castile and Aragon now 
passed to Joanna, her second daughter, who 
had married Philip, Archduke of Austria and 
son of Maximilian, an unfortunate child who 
seemed on the verge of madness. 

Isabella's youngest daughter, Catherine, be- 
came the wife of Henry VIII. of England. 



no A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Happily the mother did not hve to witness this 
child's unhappiness; but her heart-breaking 
losses and domestic griefs were greater than 
she could bear. The unbalanced condition of 
Joanna, upon whom rested all her hopes, was 
undermining her health. The results of the 
expedition of Columbus had exceeded the 
wildest dreams of romance. Gold was pour- 
ing in from the West enough to pay for the 
war with the Moors many times over, and for 
all wars to come. Spain, from being the 
poorest, had suddenly become the richest 
country in Europe; richest in wealth, in terri- 
tory, and in the imperishable glory of its dis- 
covery. But Isabella, — who had been the in- 
strument in this transformation, — who had 
built up a firm united kingdom and swept it 
clean of heretics, Jews, and Moors, — was still 
a sad and disappointed woman, thwarted in 
her dearest hopes ; and on the 26th of Novem- 
ber, 1504, she died leaving the fruits of her 
triumphs to a grandson six years old. 

This infant Charles was proclaimed King of 
Castile under the regency of his ambitious 
father, the Archduke of Austria, and his in- 
sane mother. The death of the Archduke 
and the incapacity of Joanna in a few years 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. HI 

gave to Ferdinand the control of the two king- 
doms for which he had contended and 
schemed, until his own death in 1516, when 
the crowns of Castile and Aragon passed to 
his grandson, who was proclaimed Charles L, 
King of Spain. 

A plain, sedate youth of sixteen was called 
from his home in Flanders to assume the 
crowns of Castile and Aragon. Silent, re- 
served, and speaking the Spanish language 
very imperfectly, the impression produced by 
the young King was very unpromising. No 
one suspected the designs which were matur- 
ing under that mask; nor that this boy was 
planning to grasp all the threads of diplomacy 
in Europe, and to be the master of kings. 

In 1517 Maximilian died, leaving a vacant 
throne in Germany to be contended for by the 
ambitious Francis I. of France and Maxi- 
milian's grandson, Charles. 

It was a question of supremacy in Europe. 
So the successful aspirant must win to himself 
Leo X., Henry VIII. and his great minister 
Wolsey, and after that the Electors of Ger- 
many. It required consummate skill. Fran- 
cis I. was an able player. The astute Wolsey 
made the moves for his master Henry VIII., 



112 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

keeping a watchful eye on Charles, " that 
young man who looks so modest, and soars so 
high "; while Leo X., unconscious of the com- 
ing Reformation, was craftily aiding this side 
or that as benefit to the Church seemed to be 
promised. 

But that '' modest young man " played the 
strongest game. Charles was, by the unani- 
mous vote of the Electors, raised to the im- 
perial throne; and the grandson of Isabella, 
as Charles I. of Spain and Charles V. of Ger- 
many, possessed more power than had been 
exercised by any one man since the reign of 
Augustus. The territory over which he had 
dominion in the New World was practically 
without limit. Mexico surrendered to Cortez 
(1521) and Peru to Pizarro (1532); Ponce de 
Leon was in Florida and de Soto on the banks 
of the Mississippi; while wealth, fabulous in 
amount, was pouring into Spain, and from 
thence into Flanders. 

The history of Charles belongs, in fact, 
more to Europe than to Spain. No slightest 
tenderness seems to have existed in his cold 
heart for the land of Isabella, which he seemed 
to regard simply as a treasury from which to 
draw money for the objects to which he was 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-, 113 

really devoted. So, in fact, Spain was gov- 
erned by an absolute despot who was Em- 
peror of Germany, where he resided, and she 
visibly declined from the strength and pros- 
perity which had been created by the wise and 
personal administration of Ferdinand and 
Isabella. 

The Cortes, where the deputies had never 
been allowed the privilege of debate, had 
been at its best a very imperfect expression of 
popular sentiment; and now was reduced to a 
mere empty form. Abuses which had been 
corrected under the vigilant personal ad- 
ministration of two able and patriotic sov- 
ereigns returned in aggravated form. Mis- 
rule and disorder prevailed, while their King 
was absorbed in the larger field of European 
politics and diplomacy. 

The light in which Spain shines in this, 
which is always accounted her most glorious 
period, was that of Discovery and Conquest 
and the enormous wealth coming therefrom; 
all of which was bestowed by that shabby ad- 
venturer and suppliant at the Alhambra, in 
whom Isabella alone believed, and who, after 
enriching Spain beyond its wildest expecta- 
tions, was permitted to die in poverty and neg- 



114 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

lect at Valladolid in 1506! History has writ- 
ten its verdict: imperishable renown to Co- 
lumbus, Balboa, Magellan, and the navigators 
who dared such perils and won so much; and 
eternal infamy to the men who planted a 
bloodstained Cross in those distant lands. 
The history of the West Indies, of Mexico, 
and Peru is unmatched for cruelty in the an- 
nals of the world; and Isabella's is the only 
voice that was ever raised in defense of the 
gentle, helpless race which was found in those 
lands. 

The Reformation, which had commenced in 
Germany with the reign of Charles V., had 
assumed enormous proportions. Charles, 
who was a bigot with " heart as hard as ham- 
mered iron," was using with unsparing hand 
the Inquisition, that engine of cruelty created 
by his grandmother. And while his captains, 
the " conquistadors," were burning and tor- 
turing in the West, he was burning and tortur- 
ing in the East. His entire reign was occu- 
pied in a struggle with his ambitious rival 
Francis I., and another and vain struggle with 
the followers of Luther. 

He had married Isabel, the daughter of the 
King of Portugal Philip, his son and heir, 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 115 

was bom in 1527. The desire of his heart 
was to secure for this son the succession to 
the imperial throne of Germany. To this the 
electors would not consent. He was defeated 
in the two objects dearest to his heart: the 
power to bequeath this imperial possession to 
Philip, and the destruction of Protestantism. 
So this most powerful sovereign since the day 
of Charlemagne felt himself ill-used by Fate. 
Weary and sick at heart, in the year 1556 he 
abdicated in favor of Philip. The Nether- 
lands was his own to bestow upon his son, as 
that was an inheritance from his father, the 
Archduke of Austria. So the fate of Philip 
does not seem to us so very heart-breaking, 
as, upon the abdication of his father, he was 
King of Spain, of Naples, and of Sicily; Duke 
of Milan ; Lord of the Netherlands and of the 
Indies, and of a vast portion of the American 
continent stretching from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific! 

Such was the inheritance left to his son by 
the disappointed man who carried his sorrows 
to the monastery at St. Yuste, where the 
austerities and severities he practiced finally 
cost him his life (1558). But let no one sup- 
pose that these penances were on account of 



Il6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPA/JST. 

cruelties practiced upon his Protestant sub- 
jects! From his cloister he wrote to the 
inquisitors adjuring them to show no mercy; 
to deliver all to the flames, even if they should 
recant; and the only regret of the dying peni- 
tent was that he had not executed Luther! 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Philip established his capital at Madrid, 
and commenced the Palace of the Escurial, 
nineteen miles distant, which stands to-day as 
his monument. His coronation was celebrated 
by an auto-da-fe at Valladolid, which it is said 
" he attended with much devotion." One of 
the victims, an officer of distinction, while 
awaiting his turn said to him: '' Sire, how can 
you witness such tortures? " " Were my own 
son in your place I should witness it," was the 
reply; which was a key to the character of the 
man. 

He asserted his claim through his mother, 
the Princess Isabel of Portugal, to the throne 
of that country, and after a stubborn contest 
with the Lusitanians, the long-desired union 
of Spain and Portugal was accomplished. 
This event was celebrated by Cervantes in a 
poem which extravagantly lauds his sover- 
ereign. Henry VHI. had been succeeded in 
England by Mary, daughter of his unhappy 



Il8 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

Queen, Catherine of Aragon, who, it will be 
remembered, was the daughter of Ferdinand 
and Isabella. Mary had inherited the intense 
religious fervor and perhaps the cruel in- 
stincts of her mother's family, and she quickly 
set about restoring Protestant England to the 
Catholic faith. Philip saw in a union with 
Mary and a joint sovereignty over England, 
such as he hoped would follow, an immense 
opportunity for Spain. The marriage took 
place with great splendor, and in the desire to 
please her handsome husband, of whom she 
was very fond, she commenced the work 
which has given her the title, " Bloody Mary." 
In vain were human torches lighted to lure 
Philip from Spain, where he lingered. She 
did not win his love, nor did Philip reign 
conjointly with his royal consort in England. 
Mary died in 1558, and her Protestant sister 
Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, was 
Queen of England. 

Philip had made up his mind that Protest- 
antism should be exterminated in his king- 
dom of the Netherlands. He could not go 
there himself, so he looked about for a suita- 
ble instrument for his purpose. The Duke of 
Alva was the man chosen. He was ap- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 119 

pointed Viceroy, with full authority to carry 
out the pious design. Heresy must cease to 
exist in the Netherlands. The arrival of Alva, 
clothed with such despotic powers, and the 
atrocities committed by him, caused the 
greatest indignation in the Netherlands. The 
Prince of Orange, aided by the Counts 
Egmont and Horn, organized a party to re- 
sist him, and a revolution was commenced 
which lasted for forty years, affording one of 
the blackest chapters in the history of Europe. 
The name of Alva stands at the head of the 
list of men who have wrought desolation and 
suffering in the name of religon. The other 
European states protested, and Elizabeth, in 
hot indignation, gave aid to the persecuted 
states. 

Philip had contracted a marriage, after 
Mary's death, with the daughter of that ter- 
rible woman Catherine de Medici, widow of 
Henry H. of France, and there is much rea- 
son to believe that it was this Duke of Alva 
who planned the Massacre of St. Bartholo- 
mew. There were sinister conferences be- 
tween Catherine, Philip, and Alva, and little 
doubt exists that the hideous tragedy which 
occurred in Paris on the night of August 24, 



1^0 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN'. 

1572, was arranged in Madrid, and had its first 
inception in the cruel breast of Alva. 

There had not been much love existing be- 
fore between Philip and Elizabeth, who it is 
said had refused the hand of her Spanish 
brother-in-law. But after her interference in 
the Netherlands, and when her ships were in- 
tercepting and waylaying Spanish ships 
returning with treasure from the West, and 
when at last the one was the accepted cham- 
pion of the Protestant, and the other of the 
Catholic cause, they became avowed enemies. 
Philip resolved to prepare a mighty armament 
for the invasion of England. 

In 1587 Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake 
to reconnoiter and find out what Philip was 
doing. He appeared with twenty-five ves- 
sels before Cadiz. Having learned all he 
wanted, and burned a fleet of merchant ves- 
sels, he returned to his Queen. 

In May, 1588, a fleet of one hundred and 
thirty ships, some ''the largest that ever 
plowed the deep," sailed from Lisbon for the 
English coast. We may form some idea to- 
day of what must have been the feeling in 
England when this Armada, unparalleled in 
size, appeared in the English Channel! If 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN: I2l 

Sir Francis Drake's ships were fewer and 
smaller, he could match the Spaniards in au- 
dacity. He sent eight fireships right in 
among the close-lying vessels. Then, in the 
confusion which followed, while they were 
obstructed and entangled with their own 
fleet, he swiftly attacked them with such vigor 
that ten ships were sunk or disabled, and the 
entire fleet was demoralized. Then a storm 
overtook the fleeing vessels, and the winds and 
the waves completed the victory. As in the 
Spanish report of the disaster thirty-five is the 
number of ships acknowledged to be lost, we 
may imagine how great was the destruction. 
So ended Philip's invasion of England, and 
the great Spanish " Armada." 

Philip II. died, 1598, in the Palace of the 
Escurial which he had built, and with that 
event ends the story of Spain's greatness. 
The period of one hundred and twenty-five 
years, including the reigns of Ferdinand and 
Isabella, of Charles V., and of Philip II., is, in 
a way, one of unmatched splendor. Spain 
had not like England by slow degrees ex- 
panded into great proportions, but through 
strange and perfectly fortuitous circum- 
stances, she had, from a proud obscurity, sud- 



122 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

denly leaped into a position of commanding 
power and magnificence. Fortune threw into 
her lap the greatest prize she ever had to be- 
stow, and at the same time gave her two 
sovereigns of exceptional qualities and abili- 
ties. The story of this double reign is the 
romance, the fairy tale of history. Then 
came the magnificent reign of Charles V. with 
more gifts from fortune — the imperial crown, 
if not a substantial benefit to Spain, still bring- 
ing dignity and eclat. But under this glitter- 
ing surface there had commenced even then 
a decHne. Under Philip II. she was still mag- 
nificent, Europe was bowing down to her, but 
the decline was growing more manifest; and 
with the accession of his puny son, Philip III., 
there was little left but a brilliant past, which 
a proud and retrospective nation was going to 
feed upon for over three centuries. But it 
takes some time for such dazzling effulgence 
to disappear. The glamour of the Spanish 
name was going to last a long time and pic- 
turesquely veil her decay. The memory of 
such an ascendancy in Europe nourished the 
intense national pride of her people. The 
name Castilian took on a new significance. 
Nor can we wonder at their pride in the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 123 

name '' Castilian." Its glory was not the 
capricious gift of fortune, but won by a devo- 
tion, a constancy, and a fidelity of purpose 
which are unique in the history of the world. 
For seven hundred years the race for which 
that name stands had kept alive the national 
spirit, while their land was occupied by an 
alien civilization. These were centuries of 
privation and suffering and hardship; but 
never wavering in their purpose, and by 
brave deeds which have filled volumes, they 
reclaimed their land and drove out the 
Moors. 

This is what gives to the name " Castilian," 
its proud significance. But when degenerate 
Hidalgos and Grandees, debauched by wealth 
and luxury, gloried in the name; when by 
rapacity and cruelty they destroyed the lands 
their valor had won; and when the Inquisition 
became their pastime and the rack and the 
wheel their toys — then the name Castilian be- 
gan to take on a sinister meaning. Spain's 
most glorious period was not when she was 
converting the Indies and Mexico and Peru 
into a hell, not when Charles V. was playing 
his great game of diplomacy in Europe, but 
in that pre-Columbian era when a brave and 



124 A SH0R7' HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

rugged people were keeping alive their na- 
tional life in the mountains of the Asturias. 
Well may Spain do honor to that time by call- 
ing the heir to her throne the " Prince of the 
Asturias!" 



CHAPTER XIX. 

The history of the century after the 
death of Philip 11. is one of rapid de- 
cline; with no longer a powerful master- 
mind to hold the state together. Every 
year saw the court at Madrid more splen- 
did, and the people, — that insignificant 
factor, — more wretched, and sinking deeper 
and deeper into poverty. In fact, in spite 
of the fabulous wealth which fortune had 
poured upon her, Spain was becoming poor. 
But nowhere in Europe was royalty invested 
with such dignity and splendor of ceremonial, 
and the ambitious Marie de Medici, widow of 
Henry IV., was glad to form alliances for her 
children with those of Phihp III. The 
" Prince of the Asturias," who was soon to 
become Philip IV., married her daughter, Isa- 
bella de Bourbon, and the Infanta, his sister, 
was at the same time married to the young 
Louis XIII., Kling of France. 

The remnant of the Moors who still 

"S 



126 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

lingered in the land were called Moriscos; 
and under a very thin surface of sub- 
mission to Christian Spain, they nursed 
bitter memories and even hopes that some 
miracle would some day restore them to what 
was really the land of their fathers. A very 
severe edict, promulgated by Philip II., com- 
pelling conformity in all respects with Chris- 
tian living, and — -as if that were not a part of 
Christian living — forbidding ablutions, led to 
a serious revolt. And this again led to the 
forcible expulsion of every Morisco in Spain. 

In 1609, by order of Philip III., the last of 
the Moors were conveyed in galleys to the 
African coast whence they had come just nine 
hundred years before. 

In a narrative so drenched with tears, it is 
pleasant to hear of light-hearted laughter. 
We are told that when the young King Philip 
III. saw from his window a man striking his 
forehead and laughing immoderately he said: 
" That man is either mad, or he is reading 
' Don Quixote ' " — which latter was the case. 
But the story written by Cervantes did more 
than entertain. Chivalry had lingered in the 
congenial soil of Spain long after it had disapv- 
peared in every other part of Europe; but 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 127 

when in the person of Don Quixote it was 
made to appear so utterly ridiculous, it was 
heard of no more. 

Philip III., who died in 1621, was succeeded 
by his son Philip IV. As in the reign of his 
father worthless favorites ruled, while a profli- 
gate king squandered the money of the people 
in lavish entertainments and luxuries. Much 
has been written about the visit of Charles, 
Prince of Wales (afterward Charles I.), accom- 
panied by the Duke of Buckingham, at his 
court; whither the young Prince had come 
disguised, to see the Infanta, Philip's sister, 
whom he thought of making his queen. 
Probably she did not please him, or perhaps 
the alliance with Protestant England was not 
acceptable to the pious Catholic family of 
Philip. At all events, Henrietta, sister of 
Louis XIII. of France, was his final choice, 
and shared his terrible misfortunes a few years 
later. 

A revolt of the Catalonians on the French 
frontier led to a difficulty with France, which 
was finally adjusted by the celebrated " treaty 
of the Pyrenees." In this treaty was included 
the marriage of the young King Louis XIV. 
and Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV., 



128 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

the King of Spain. The European Powers 
would only consent to this union upon con- 
dition that Louis should solemnly renounce 
all claim to the Spanish crown for himself and 
his heirs; which promise had later a somewhat 
eventful history. 

Seven of the United Provinces had achieved 
their independence during the reign of the 
third Philip, who had also driven out of his 
kingdom six hundred thousand Moriscos; by 
far the most skilled and industrious portion of 
the community. And now, at the close of the 
reign of Philip IV., the kingdom was further 
dimnished by the loss of Portugal; which, in 
1664, the Lusitanians recovered, and pro- 
claimed the Duke of Braganza King. When 
we add to this the loss of much of the Nether- 
lands, and of the island of Jamaica, and con- 
cessions here and there to France and to Italy, 
it will be obvious that a process of contraction 
had soon followed that of Spain's phenome- 
nal expansion! 

During the reign of Carlos II., who suc- 
ceeded his father (1665), Spain was still fur- 
ther diminished by the cession to Louis XIV., 
in 1678, of more provinces in the Low Coun- 
tries and also of the region now known 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 129 

as Alsace and Lorraine; which, it will be re- 
membered, have in our own time passed from 
the keeping of France to that of victorious 
Germany. 

In the year 1655 the island of Jamaica was 
captured by an expedition sent out by Crom- 
well. It was between the years 1670 and 1686 
that the Spaniard and the Anglo-Saxon had 
their first collision in America. St. Augustine 
had been founded in 1565, and the old Span- 
ish colony was much disturbed in 1663, when 
Charles 11. of England planted an English 
colony in their near neighborhood (the Caro- 
linas). During the war between Spain and 
England at the time above mentioned, feeling 
ran high between Florida and the Carolinas, 
and houses were burned and blood was shed. 
Spain had felt no concern about the Httle Eng- 
lish colony planted on the bleak New England 
coast in 1620. Death by exposure and star- 
vation promised speedily to remove that. But 
the settlement on the Carolinas was more seri- 
ous, and at the same time the French were 
planting a colony of their own at the mouth 
of the Mississippi. The '' lords of America " 
began to feel anxious about their control of 
the Gulf of Mexico. The cloud was a very 



130 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

small one, but it was not to be the last which 
would dim their skies in the West. 

The one thing which gives historic impor- 
tance to the reign of Carlos II. is that it marks 
the close — the ignominious close — of the great 
Hapsburg dynasty in Spain. And if the death 
of Carlos, in 1700, was a melancholy event, it 
is because with it the scepter so magnificently 
wielded by Ferdinand and Isabella passed to 
the keeping of the House of Bourbon, whose 
Spanish descendants have, excepting for two 
brief intervals, ruled Spain ever since. 



CHAPTER XX. 

The last century had wrought great changes 
in European conditions. " The Holy Roman 
Empire," after a thirty-years' war with 
Protestantism, was shattered, and the Em- 
peror of Germany was no longer the head of 
Europe. Protestant England had sternly 
executed Charles I., and then in the person of 
James H. had swept the last of the Catholic 
House of Stuart out of her kingdom. France, 
on the foundation laid by Richelieu, had de- 
veloped into a powerful despotism, which her 
King, Louis XIV., was making magnificent 
at home and feared abroad. 

For Spain it had been a century of steady 
decline, with loss of territory, power, and pres- 
tige. No longer great in herself, she was 
regarded by her ambitious neighbor, Louis 
XIV., as only a make-weight in the supremacy 
in Europe upon which he was determined. 
He had been ravaging the enfeebled German 
Empire, and now a friendly fate opened a 



132 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-. 

peaceful door through which he might make 
Spain contribute to his greatness. 

Carlos II. died (1700) without an heir. 
There was a vacant throne in Spain to which 
— on account of Louis' marriage, years before, 
with the Spanish Princess Maria Theresa — 
his grandson Philip had now the most 
valid claim. The other claimant, Archduke 
Karl, son of Leopold, Emperor of Germany, 
in addition to having a less direct hereditary 
descent, was unacceptable to the Spanish peo- 
ple, who had no desire to be ruled again 
by an occupant of the Imperial throne of 
Germany. 

So, as Louis wished it, and the Spanish peo- 
ple also wished it, there was only one obstacle 
to his design; that was a promise made at the 
time of his marriage that he would never claim 
that throne for himself or his heirs. But 
when the Pope, after " prayerful deliberation," 
absolved him from that promise the way was 
clear. This grandson, just seventeen years 
old, was proclaimed Philip V., King of Spain, 
and Louis in the fullness of his heart ex- 
claimed, " The Pyrenees have ceased to 
exist!'' 

Perhaps it would have been better for the 



A SNOUT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 133 

King if he had not made that dramatic 
exclamation. A man who could remove 
mountains to make a path for his ambitions 
might also drain seas! England took warn- 
ing. She had been quietly bearing his insults 
for a long time, and not till he had imperti- 
nently threatened to place upon her throne 
the Pretender, the exiled son of James IL, 
had she joined the coalition against the 
French King. But now she sent more 
armies, and a great captain to re-enforce 
Prince Eugene, who was fighting this battle 
for the Archduke Karl and for Europe. 

But Louis had reached the summit. He 
was to go no higher than he had climbed when 
he uttered that vain boast. Philip V. was 
acknowledged King in 1702, and in 1704 
Blenheim had been fought and won by Marl- 
borough, and the decline of the Grand 
Monarque had commenced. 

The war against him by a combined Europe 
now became the war of the " Spanish Suc- 
cession." England and Holland united with 
Emperor Leopold to curb his limitless am- 
bition. The purpose of the war of the " Span- 
ish Succession " was, ostensibly, to place the 
Austrian Archduke upon the throne of Spain; 



134 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

its real purpose was to check the alarming 
ascendancy of Louis XIV. in Europe. 

It lasted for years, the poor young King 
and Queen being driven from one city to an- 
other, while the Austrian Archduke was at 
Madrid striving to reign over a people who 
would not recognize him. 

Spain was being made the sport of three 
nations in pursuance of their own ambitious 
ends. Her land was being ravaged by foreign 
armies, recruited from three of her own dis- 
affected provinces; while a young King with 
whom she was well satisfied was peremptorily 
ordered to make way for one Austria, Eng- 
land, and Holland preferred. It was a 
humiliating proof of the decline in national 
spirit, and the old Castilian pride must have 
sorely degenerated for such things to be pos- 
sible. 

Finally, after Louis XIV. had once more 
given solemn oath that the crowns of France 
and Spain should never be united, the " Peace 
of Utrecht " w^as signed (171 3). But the pro- 
visions of the treaty were momentous for 
Spain. She was at one stroke of the pen 
stripped of half her possessions in Europe. 
Philip V. was acknowledged King of Spain 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 135 

and the Indies. But Sicily, with its regal 
title, was ceded to the Duke of Savoy; Milan, 
Naples, Sardinia, and the Netherlands went 
to Karl, now Emperor Charles VI. of Ger- 
many; while Minorca and Gibraltar passed to 
the keeping of England. 

No one felt unmixed satisfaction, except 
perhaps England. The Archduke had failed 
to get his throne, and to wear the double 
crown like Charles V. Louis had carried his 
point. He had succeeded in keeping the 
kingdom for his grandson. But that king- 
dom was dismembered, and had shrunk to in- 
significant proportions in Europe, while Eng- 
land, most fortunate of all, had carried off the 
key to the Mediterranean. That little rocky 
promontory of Gibraltar w^as potentially of 
more value than all the rest! 

Such was the beginning of the dynasty of 
the Bourbon in Spain. PhiHp was succeeded, 
upon his death in 1746, by his son Ferdinand 
VL, who also died, in 1759, and was succeeded 
by his brother, Philip's second son, who was 
known as Carlos III. When we try to praise 
these princes of the wretched Bourbon line, it 
is by mention of the evil they have refrained 
from doing rather than the good they have 



tS^ A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAW. 

done. So Carlos III. is said to have done 
less harm to Spain than his predecessors. He 
established libraries and academies of science 
and of arts, and ruled like a kind-hearted gen- 
tleman, without the vices of his recent prede- 
cessors. His severity toward the Jesuits and 
their forcible expulsion from Spain, in 1767, 
are said to have been caused by personal re- 
sentment on account of some slanderous 
rumors regarding his birth, which were traced 
to them. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

But the fate of Spain was not now in the 
hands of her Kings. Were they good or evil 
she was destined henceforth to drift in the 
currents of circumstance, that sternest of 
masters, to whom her Kings as well as her 
people would be obliged helplessly to bow. 
All that she now possessed outside the bor- 
ders of her own kingdom was the West In- 
dies, her colonies in America, North and 
South, and the Philippines, that archipelago 
of a thousand isles in the southern Pacific, 
where Magellan was slain by the savage in- 
habitants after he had discovered it (1520). 

Mexico and Peru had proved to be inex- 
haustible sources of wealth, and when the gold 
and silver diminished, theViceroys in these and 
the other colonies could compel the people to 
wring rich products out of the soil, enough to 
supply Spain's necessities. The inhabitants 
of these colonies, composed of the aboriginal 
races with an admixture of Spanish, had 



13^ ^ SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 

been treated as slaves and drudges for so many 
centuries that they never dreamed of resist- 
ance, nor questioned the justice of a fate which 
condemned them ahvays to toil for Spain. 

In the North the feeble colony planted in 
1620 had expanded into thirteen vigorous 
English colonies. France, too, had been 
colonizing in America, and had drawn her 
frontier line from the mouth of the Mississippi 
to Canada. In 1755 a collision occurred be- 
tween England and France over their Ameri- 
can boundaries. By the year 1759, France 
had lost Quebec and every one of her strong- 
holds, and she formed an alliance with Spain 
in a last effort to save her vanishing posses- 
sions in America. 

Spain's punishment for this interference 
was swift. England promptly dispatched 
ships to Havana and to the Philippines; and 
when we read of the Anglo-Saxon capturing 
Havana and the adjacent islands on one side 
of the globe, and the City of Manila and four- 
teen of the Philippines on the other, in the 
midsummer of 1762, it has a slightly familiar 
sound. And when the old record further 
says, the " conquest in the West Indies cost 
many precious lives, more of whom were de- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 139 

stroyed by the climate than by the enemy," 
and still again, " the capture of Manila was 
conducted with marvelous celerity and judg- 
ment," we begin to wonder whether we are 
reading the dispatches of the Associated 
Press in 1898, or history! 

In the treaty which followed these victories, 
upon condition of England's returning Ha- 
vana, and all the conquered territory except- 
ing a portion of the West India Islands, Spain 
ceded to her the peninsula of Florida; while 
France, who was obliged to give to England 
all her territory east of the Mississippi, gave 
to Spain in return for her services the city of 
New Orleans, and all her territory west of the 
great river. This territory was retroceded 
to France by Spain in the year 1800, by the 
" Treaty of Madrid," and in 1803 was pur- 
chased by America from Napoleon, under the 
title of " Louisiana." 

There was a growing irritation in the Span- 
ish heart against England. She was crowding 
Spain out of North America, had insinuated 
herself into the West India Islands, and she 
was mistress of Gibraltar. So it was with no 
little satisfaction that they saw her involved in 
a serious quarrel with her American colonies, 



I40 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

at a time when a stubborn and incompetent 
Hanoverian King was doing his best to de- 
stroy her. The hour seemed auspicious for 
recovering Gibraltar, and also to drive Eng- 
land out of the West Indies. The alliance 
with France had become a permanent one, 
and was known as a family compact between 
the Bourbon cousins Louis XV. and Carlos 
III. France had at this time rather distract- 
ing conditions at home; but she was thirsting 
for revenge at the loss of her rich American 
possessions, and besides, a sentimental inter- 
est in the brave people who had proclaimed 
their independence from the mother coun- 
try, and were fighting to maintain it, began to 
manifest itself. It was fanned, no doubt, by 
a desire for England's humiliation; but it 
assumed a form too chivalric and too generous 
for Americans ever to discredit by unfriendly 
analysis of motive. Spain cared little for the 
cause of the colonies; but she was quite will- 
ing to help them by worrying and diverting 
the energies of England. So she invested 
Gibraltar. A garrison of only a handful of 
men astonished Europe by the bravery of its 
defense. Gibraltar was not taken by the 
Bourbon allies, neither were the English 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 141 

driven out of the West Indies. But it was a 
satisfaction to Spain to see her humbled by 
her victorious colonies! 

So Carlos III. had indirectly assisted in the 
establishment of a republic on the confines of 
his Mexican Empire; apparently unconscious 
of the contagion in the word independence. 
But he quickly learned this to his sorrow. 
The story of the revolted and freed colonies 
sped on the wings of the wind. And in Peru 
a brave descendant of the Incas arose as a De- 
liverer. He led sixty thousand men into a 
vain fight for liberty. Of course the effort 
failed, but a spirit had been awakened which 
might be smothered, but never extinguished. 

Carlos III. died in 1788 and was succeeded 
by his son Carlos IV. 

During the miserable reign of this miser- 
able King, France caught the infection from 
the free institutions in America. The Repub- 
lic she had helped to create was fatal to mon- 
archy in her own land. A revolution ac- 
companied by unparalleled horrors swept 
away the whole tyrannous system of centuries 
and left the country a trembling wreck — ^but 
free. The dream of a republic was brief. 
Napoleon gathered the imperfectly organized 



142 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

government into his own hands, then by suc- 
cessive and rapid steps arose to Imperial 
power. France was an Empire, and adoringly 
submitted to the man who swiftly made her 
great and feared in Europe. She had another 
Charlemagne, who was bringing to his feet 
Kings and Princes, and annexing half of 
Europe to his empire ! 

Spain, all unconscious of his designs, and 
perhaps thinking this invincible man might 
help her to get back Gibraltar and to drive 
the English out of the West Indies, joined 
him in 1804 in a war against Great Britain; 
and the following year the combined fleets of 
France and Spain were annihilated by Lord 
Nelson off Cape Trafalgar. Family dissen- 
sions in the Spanish royal household at this 
time w^ere opportune for Napoleon's designs. 
Carlos and his son Ferdinand were engaged 
in an unseemly quarrel. Carlos appealed to 
Napoleon regarding the treasonable conduct 
and threats of his son. Nothing could have 
better suited the purposes of the Emperor. 
The fox had been invited to be umpire! 
French troops poured into Spain. Carlos, 
under protest, resigned in favor of his son, 
who was proclaimed Ferdinand VIL (1807). 
The young King \vas then invited to meet the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN . 143 

Emperor for consultation at Bayonne. He 
found himself a prisoner in France, and to 
Joseph Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor, 
was transferred the Crown of Spain. 

The nation seemed paralyzed by the swift- 
ness and the audacity of these overturnings. 
But soon popular indignation found expres- 
sion. Juntas were formed. The one at Se- 
ville, calling itself the Supreme Junta, pro- 
claimed an alliance with Great Britain; its 
purpose being the expulsion of the French 
from their kingdom. 

Spain was in a state of chaos. Joseph was 
not without Spanish adherents, and there was 
no leader, no legitimate head to give consti- 
tutional stamp to the acts of the protesting 
people, who without the usual formalities 
convoked the Cortes. But while they were 
groping after reforms, and while Lx>rd Wel- 
lington was driving back the French, Na- 
poleon had met his reverse at Moscow, and a 
" War of Liberation " had commenced in 
Germany. 

The grasp upon the Spanish throne re- 
laxed. The captive King had permission to 
return, and the reign of Joseph was ended by 
his ignominious flight from the kingdom, 
with one gold-piece in his pocket (18 14). 



CHAPTER XXII. 

The decade between 1804 and 181 4 had 
been very barren in external benefits to Spain, 
with her King held in " honorable captivity " 
in France, and the obscure Joseph abjectly 
striving to please not his subjects, but his au- 
gust brother Napoleon. But in this time of 
chaos, when there was no Bourbon King, no 
long-established despotism to stifle popular 
sentiment, the unsuspected fact developed 
that Spain had caught the infection of free- 
dom. 

When, as we have seen, the Cortes assumed 
all the functions of a government, that body 
(in 1 81 2) drew up a new Constitution for 
Spain, So completely did this remodel the 
whole administration, that the most despotic 
monarchy in Europe was transformed into 
the one most severely limited. 

Great was the surprise of Ferdinand VII. 
when, in 18 14, he came to the throne of his 
ejected father Carlos IV., to find himself 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 145 

called upon to reign under a Constitution 
which made Spain almost as free as a republic. 
He promulgated a decree declaring the Cortes 
illegal and rescinding all its acts, the Consti- 
tution of 1 81 2 included. Then when he had 
re-established the Inquisition, which had 
been abolished by the Cortes, when he had 
publicly burned the impertinent Constitution, 
and quenched conspiracies here and there, he 
settled himself for a comfortable reign after 
the good old arbitrar>^ fashion. 

The Napoleonic empire having been effaced 
by a combined Europe, Ferdinand's Bourbon 
cousins were in the same way restoring the 
excellent methods of their fathers in France. 

But there was a spirit in the air which was 
not favorable to the peace of Kings. On the 
American coast there stood '' Liberty Enlight- 
ening the World! " A growing, prosperous 
republic was a shining example of what might 
be done by a brave resistance to oppression 
and a determined spirit of independence. 

The pestilential leaven of freedom had been 
at work while monarchies slept in security. 
Ferdinand discovered that not only was there 
a seditious sentiment in his own kingdom, but 
every one of his American colonies was in 



146 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

Open rebellion, and some were even daring to 
set up free governments in imitation of the 
United States. 

Not only was Ferdinand's sovereignty 
threatened, but the very principle of monarchy 
itself was endangered. 

Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed them- 
selves into a league for the preservation of 
Avhat they were pleased to call " The Divine 
Right of Kings." It was the attack upon this 
sacred principle, which was the germ of all 
this mischievous talk about freedom. They 
called their league '* The Holy Alliance," and 
what they proposed to do was to stamp out 
free institutions in the germ. 

In pursuance of this purpose, in 1819 there 
appeared at Cadiz a large fleet, assembled for 
the subjugation of Spanish America. 

But there was an Anglo-Saxon America, 
which had a preponderating influence in that 
land now; and there was also an Anglo-Saxon 
race in Europe which had its own views 
about the " Divine Right of Kings," and also 
concerning the mission of the " Holy Alli- 
ance." 

The right of three European Powers to re- 
store to Spain her revolte4 colonies in America 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIJSr. 147 

was denied by President Monroe; not upon 
the ground of Spain's inhumanity, and the in- 
herent right of the colonies to an independ- 
ence which they might achieve. Such was 
the nature of England's protest, through her 
Minister Canning. But President Monroe's 
contention rested on a much broader ground. 
In a message delivered in 1823 he uttered 
these words: " European Powers must not ex- 
tend their political systems to any portion of 
the American continent." The meaning of 
this was that America has been won for free- 
dom; and no European Power will be per- 
mitted to establish a monarchy, nor to coerce 
in any way, nor to suppress inclinations to- 
ward freedom, in any part of the Western 
Hemisphere. This is the '' Monroe Doc- 
trine"; a doctrine which, although so start- 
ling in 1832, had in 1896 become so firmly im- 
bedded in the minds of the people, that 
Congress decided it to be a vital principle of 
American policy. 

But there was another and more serious 
obstacle in the way of the proposed plan for 
subjugating the Spanish-American colonies. 
The army assembled by the Holy Alliance at 
Cadiz was an offense to the people who had 



148 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN'. 

seen their Constitution burned and their hopes 
of a freer giovernment destroyed. Officers 
and troops refused to embark, and joined a 
concourse of disaffected people at Cadiz. A 
smothered popular sentiment burst forth into 
a series of insurrections throughout Spain, 
and the astonished Ferdinand was compelled, 
in 1820, to acknowledge the Constitution of 
1 81 2. This was not upholding the principle 
of the '* Divine Right of Kings "! So, under 
the direction of the Holy Alliance, a French 
army of one hundred thousand men moved 
into Spain, took possession of her capital, and 
for two years administered her affairs under a 
regency, and then reinstated Ferdinand, leav- 
ing a French army of occupation. 

In this contest two distinct political parties 
had developed — the Liberal party and the 
party of Absolutism. As Ferdinand VII. be- 
came the choice of the Liberals, and his 
brother Don Carlos of the party of Absolut- 
ism, we must infer either that it was a Liberal- 
ism of a very mild type, or that Ferdinand's 
views had been modified since the " Holy 
Alliance " took his kingdom into its own 
keeping. But his brother Carlos was the 
adored of the Absolutists, and a plot was made 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 149 

to compel Ferdinand to abdicate in his favor. 
This was the first of the Carlist plots, which, 
with little intermission, and always in the in- 
terest of despotism and bigotry, have 
menaced the safety and well-being of Spain 
ever since. From the year 1825 to 1898 there 
has been always a Don Carlos to trouble the 
political waters in that land. 

So the mission of the ''Holy Alliance " had 
failed. Instead of rehabilitating the sacred 
principle of the '' Divine Right of Kings," 
they saw a powerful liberal party established 
in a kingdom which was the very stronghold 
of despotism. And instead of stamping out 
free institutions, six Spanish-American colo- 
nies had been recognized as free and inde- 
pendent states (1826). Spain had for three 
centuries ruled the richest and the fairest land 
on the earth. She had shown herself utterly 
undeserving of the opportunity, and unfit for 
the responsibilities imposed by a great colonial 
empire. She had sown the wind and now she 
reaped the whirlwind. She did not own a 
foot of territory on the continent she had dis- 
covered ! 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

In 1833 King Ferdinand VII. died, leaving 
one child, the Princess Isabella, who was 
three years old. Here was the opportunity 
for the adherents of Don Carlos. 

The " Salic law " had been one of the 
Gothic traditions of ancient Spain, and had 
with few exceptions been in force until 1789; 
when Carlos IV. issued a " Pragmatic Sanc- 
tion," establishing the succession through the 
female as well as the male line; and on April 
6, 1830, King Ferdinand confirmed this de- 
cree; so, when Isabella was bom, October 10, 
1830, she was heiress to the throne, unless her 
ambitious uncle, Don Carlos, could set aside 
the decree abrogating the old Salic law, and 
reign as Carlos IV. 

In the three years before his brother's death 
he had laid his plans for the coming crisis. 
Isabella was proclaimed Queen under the 
regency of her depraved mother Christina. 
The extreme of the Catholic party, and of the 
reactionary or absolutist party, flocked about 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 15 1 

the Carlist standard; while the party of the in- 
fant Queen was the rallying point for the lib- 
eral and progressive sentiment in the king- 
dom; and her cause had the support of the 
new reform government of Louis Philippe in 
France, and of lovers of freedom elsewhere. 

The party of the Queen triumphed. But 
the Carlists survived; and, like the Bourbons 
in France, have ever since in times of political 
peril been a serious element to be reckoned 
with. 

During the infancy of the Queen, Spain was 
the prey of unceasing party dissensions; Don 
Carlos again and again trying to overthrow 
her government, and again and again being 
driven a fugitive over the Pyrenees; while 
the Queen Regent, who was secretly married 
to her Chamberlain, the son of a tobacconist 
in Madrid, was bringing disgrace and odium 
upon the Liberal party which she was sup- 
posed to lead. 

In 1843 the Cortes declared that the Queen 
had attained her majority. Her disgraced 
mother was driven out of the country and Isa- 
bella II. ascended her throne. Isabella had a 
younger sister, Maria Louisa, and in 1846 the 
double marriage of these two children was 



152 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

celebrated with great splendor at Madrid. 
The Queen was married to her cousin Don 
Francisco d'Assisi. and her sister to the Duke 
de Montpensier, fifth son of Louis Philippe. 

If, upon the birth of Liberalism in Spain, 
that kingdom could have been governed by a 
wise and competent sovereign, the conclud- 
ing chapters of this narrative might have been 
very different. No time could have been less 
favorable for a radical change in policy than 
the period during which Isabella II. was 
Queen of Spain. Personally she was all that 
a woman and a Queen should not be. With 
apparently not an exalted desire or ambition 
for her country, this depraved daughter of a 
depraved mother pursued her downward 
course until 1868, w^hen the nation would bear 
no more. A revolution broke out. Isabella, 
with her three children, fled to France and 
there was once more a vacant throne in Spain. 

The hopes of the Carlists ran high. But 
the Cortes came to an unexpected decision. 
They would have no Spanish Bourbon, be he 
Carlist or Liberal. The reigning dynasty in 
Italy was at this moment the adored of the 
Liberals in Europe. So they offered the 
Crown to Amadeo, second son of Victor 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN: 153 

Emmanuel, King of Italy. Three years were 
quite sufficient for this experiment. The 
young Amadeo was as glad to take off his 
crown and to leave his kingdom, as the people 
were to have him do so. He abdicated in 

1873- 

The Liberal party had been regretting their 
loss of opportunity in 1870. France had passed 
through many political phases in the last few 
years, and the present French RepubHc had 
just come into existence. Again Spain caught 
the contagion from her neighbor, and Spanish 
Liberalism became Spanish Republicanism. 

When Castelar, that patriotic and saga- 
cious statesman, friend of Garibaldi, of Maz- 
zini, and of Kossuth, led this movement, many 
hopefully believed the political millennium 
was at hand, when Spain was about to join the 
brotherhool of Republics! But something 
more than a great leader is needed to create a 
Republic. The magic of Castelar's eloquence, 
the purity of his character, and the force of 
his convictions were powerless to hold in 
stable union the conflicting elements with 
which he had to deal. The Carlists were 
scheming, and the Cortes was driven to an 
immediate decision. 



154 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

The fugitive Queen Isabella had with her in 
exile a young son Alfonso, seventeen years of 
age. Alfonso was invited to return upon the 
sole condition that his mother should be ex- 
cluded from his kingdom. An insurrection 
which was being fomented by Don Carlos II. 
led to this action of the Cortes, which was per- 
haps the wisest possible under the circum- 
stances. The young Prince of the legitimate 
Bourbon line ^vas proclaimed King Alfonso 
XII. in 1874. 

A romantic marriage with his cousin Mer- 
cedes, daughter of the Duke de Montpensier, 
to whom he was deeply attached, speedily 
took place. Only five months later Mercedes 
died and was laid in the gloomy Escurial. A 
marriage was then arranged with Christina, 
an Austrian Archduchess, who was brought to 
Madrid, and there was another marriage cele- 
brated with much splendor. The infant 
daughter, who was born a few years later, was 
named Mercedes; a loving tribute to the 
adored young Queen he had lost, which did 
credit as much to Christina as to Alfonso. 

The hard school of exile had, no doubt, 
been an advantage to Alfonso; and at the out- 
set of his reign he won t|ie confidence of the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 155 

Liberals by saying " he wished them to un- 
derstand he was the first Republican in 
Europe; and when they were tired of him they 
had only to tell him so, and he would leave as 
quickly as Amadeo had done." There was 
not time to test the sincerity of these assur- 
ances. Alfonso XII. died in 1885, and joined 
Mercedes and his long line of predecessors in 
the Escurial. Five months later his son was 
born, and the throne which had been filled by 
the little Mercedes passed to the boy who was 
proclaimed Alfonso XIII. of Spain, under the 
Regency of his mother Queen Christina. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

At the beginning of the nineteenth century 
the foreign dominions of Spain, although re- 
duced, were still a vast and imperial posses- 
sion. The colonial territory over which Al- 
fonso XIII. was to have sovereignty at the 
close of that century, consisted of the Philip- 
pines, the richest of the East Indies; Cuba, the 
richest of the West Indies ; Porto Rico, and a 
few outlying groups of islands of no great 
value. 

Nowhere had the Constitution of 1812 
awakened more hope than in Cuba; and from 
the setting aside of that instrument by 
Ferdinand VI. dates the existence of an in- 
surgent party in that beautiful but most 
unhappy island. Ages of spoliation and 
cruelty and wrong had done their work. The 
iron of oppression had entered into the soul 
of the Cuban. There was a deep exaspera- 
tion which refused to be calmed. From 
thenceforth annexation to the United States, 
or else a '' Cuba Libre'' was the determined, 
and even desperate aim. 

XS6 ^ 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 157 

After a ten-years' war, 1868-78, the people 
yielded to what proved a delusive promise of 
home-rule. How could Spain bestow upon 
her colony what she did not possess herself? 
When in 1881 she tried to pacify Cuba by per- 
mitting that island to send six Senators to sit 
in the Spanish Cortes, it was a phantom of a 
phantom. There was no outlet for the na- 
tional will in Spain itself. Her Cortes was 
not a national assembly, and its members were 
not the choice of the people. How much less 
must they be so then in Cuba, where they 
were only men of straw selected by the home 
government, for the purpose of defeating — 
not expressing — the popular will? The emp- 
tiness of this gift was soon discovered. Then 
came a shorter conflict, which was only a pre- 
lude to the last. 

A handful of ragged revolutionists, igno- 
rant of the arts of war, commenced the final 
struggle for liberty on February 24, 1895, 
under the leadership of Jose Marti. At the 
end of two years a poorly armed band of guer- 
rilla soldiers had waged a successful contest 
against 235,000 well-equipped troops, sup- 
ported by a militia and a navy, and maintained 
by supplies from Spain; had adopted a Con- 



15S A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

stitution, and were asking for recognition as 
a free Republic. The Spanish commander 
Martinez Campos was superseded by General 
Weyler (1895), and a new and severer method 
was inaugurated in dealing with the stubborn 
revolutionists, but with no better success than 
before. In August, 1897, an insurrection 
broke out anew in the Philippines, and Spain 
was in despair. 

America calmly resisted all appeals for an- 
nexation or for intervention in Cuba. Sym- 
pathy for Cuban patriots was strong in the 
hearts of the people, but the American Gov- 
ernment steadfastly maintained an attitude of 
strict neutrality and impartiality, and with un- 
exampled patience saw a commerce amount- 
ing annually to one hundred millions of dollars 
wiped out of existence, her citizens reduced to 
want by the destruction of their property, — 
some of them lying in Spanish dungeons 
subjected to barbarities which were worthy of 
the Turkish Janizaries; our fleets used as a 
coastguard and a police, in the protection of 
Spanish interests, and more intolerable than 
all else, our hearts wrung by cries of anguish 
at our very doors! 

But when General Weyler inaugurated a 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 159 

system for the deliberate starvation of thirty 
thousand " Reconcentrados," an innocent 
peasantry driven from their homes and herded 
in cities, there to perish, the limit of patience 
was reached. It was this touch of human 
pity — this last and intolerable strain upon our 
sympathies — which turned the scale. 

While a profound feeling of indignation was 
prevailing on account of these revolting 
crimes against humanity, the battleship Maine 
was, by request of Consul General Lee at that 
place, dispatched to the harbor of Havana to 
guard American citizens and interests. The 
sullen reception of the Maine was followed on 
February 15, 1898, by a tragedy which 
shocked the world. Whether the destruc- 
tion of that ship and the death of 266 brave 
men was from internal or external causes was 
a very critical question. It was submitted to 
a court of inquiry which, after long delibera- 
tion, rendered the decision that the cause was 
— external. 

It looked dark for lovers of peace! Presi- 
dent McKinley exhausted all the resources of 
diplomacy before he abandoned hope of a 
peaceful adjustment which would at the same 
time compel justice to the Cuban people. 



l6o A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

But on April 25, 1898, it was declared that 
war existed between Spain and America. 

On May i Commodore Dewey achieved a 
victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila un- 
matched in the history of naval warfare. 
With Admiral Dewey virtual master of the 
Philippines, and Admiral Sampson investing 
the island of Cuba, there seems little doubt 
that the colonial empire of Spain is at an end, 
and centuries of cruelty are avenged. 

The ancient kingdom over which Alfonso 
XIII. expects to rule is tending to its fall. It 
requires small prophetic vision to see that 
Turkey in the east of Europe, and Spain in 
the west must soon give way to the advancing 
tide of modern civilization. A people whose 
national festival is a bull-fight, is as much of 
an anachronism in this closing century as is 
one whose most revered institution is a 
harem. 

Cruelty is not in favor with the world to- 
day; and whether in Bulgaria, or Armenia, or 
in Havana, it will not be borne. A nation which 
converts the fairest island on earth into a 
human shambles has put herself beyond the 
pale of the family of other Christian nations. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. i6l 

Spain is medieval in her methods and ideals. 
In the time of her opulence and splendor these 
methods and ideals were hers. So she be- 
lieves in them "and clings to them still. She 
is the victim of a vicious political system, to 
which an intensely proud, patriotic, and brave 
people believe they must be loyal. 

In no other land — as we have seen — is the 
national spirit so strong. Certainly nowhere 
else has it ever been subjected to such strain 
and survived. And this intense loyalty, this 
overwhelming pride of race, this magnificent 
valor, are all summoned to uphold a poor, 
perishing, vicious political system, which has 
not one heart-beat in harmony with the world 
in which it lingers. 

We believe there are warm and generous 
hearts, and men good and true in Spain to- 
day. Nowhere has liberal sentiment found a 
leader more exalted than is Castelar. So how 
paralyzing must be the existing political con- 
ditions, when a man such as he finds his 
path of duty in upholding such a government 
and such enormities! 

For the redemption of Turkey there is no 
hope. That is a mass of corruption which 
vultures and natural processes will ere long 



l62 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 

remove. But for Spain — beautiful but erring 
Spain — there may still be a future. 

" What doth the Lord require of thee 
but to do justly, — to love mercy, — and to 
walk humbly before thy god." 



LIST OF VISIGOTH KINGS. 



A. D. 

Ataulfus . 411-415 

Wallia, 415-420 

Theodored, 420-451 

Thorismund, 451-452 

Theodoric I. (Defeated Attila), . . . 452-466 

Evaric (Completed Gothic Conquest in Spain), 466-483 

Alaric, 483-506 

Gesaleic, 506-511 

Theodoric II., . . , . . . 511-522 

Amalaric, 522-531 

Theudis, 531-548 

Theudisel, 548-549 

Agilan 549-554 

Athanagild I., . , . . 554-5^7 

Liuval., 567-570 

Leovigild, 570-587 

Recaredl 587-601 

Liuva II 601-603 

Witteric, 603-610 

Gundemar, ........ 610-612 

Sisebert 612-621 

Recared II. (3 months). 

Swintila 621-631 

Sisenand 631-636 

Chintila 636-640 

Tulga 640-642 

163 



1 64 LIST OF VISIGOTH KINGS. 

A. D. 

Chindaswind, 642-649 

Receswind. 649-672 

Wamba, 672-680 

Ervigius, 680-687 

Egica (son of Wamba), 687-701 

Witiza, 701-709 

Roderick, ........ 709-711 

Theodomir. hfir,cr« withmitn Vi^«rr1nT.n i ' 711-743 

743-755 



., , ^^ r Kings without a kingdom -> 
Athanagild II., ) ° ** ( 



KINGS OF THE ASTURIAS AND 
LEON. 



A. D. 

Pelayo (of Royal Gothic birth) 718 

Favila (son of above), 737 

Alfonso I. (son-in-law of Pelayo) 739 

Fniela I. (son of Alfonso), 757 

Aurelio, 768 

Mauregato . 774 

Bermudo I., 788 

Alfonso II., 791 

Ramiro I., 842 

Ordonol,, 850 

Alfonso III., 866 

Garcia, 910 

OrdoSo II., 914 

Fniela II., 923 

Alfonso IV., 925 

Ramiro II., 930 

Ordono III 950 

Sancho I., 955 

Ramiro III 967 

Bermudo II., 982 

Alfonso v., 999 

Bermudo III 1027 

Fernando I. (also King of Castile), . . . 1037 

Alfonso VI., 1065 

Urraca 1109 

Alfonso VII. (also King of Castile), . . .1126 
165 



l66 KINGS OF THE ASTURIAS AND LEON. 













A. D. 


Fernando II., 1157 


Alfonso IX. (Aided Conquest of Moors), . . 1188 


Fernando III., 1230 


LEON AND CASTILE UNITED. 


Alfonso X. i^el sabio), 1252 


Sancho IV., . 










1284 


Fernando IV., . 










. 1295 


Alfonso XI., . 










> I312 


Pedro I. {el cruet), . 










1350 


Enrique II., . 










. 1369 


Juan I 










1379 


Enrique IV., . 










1454 


Isabel I. (married to Fernand 


oil. 


of A 


rago] 


a). 


1474 



CASTILE AND ARAGON UNITED. 

Carlos I. (Charles I. Elected Charles V. of Ger- 
many, 1519), 1516 

Philip II., 1556 

Philip III., . 1593 

Philip IV 1621 

Carlos II 1665 

HOUSE OF BOURBON. 

Philip v., 1700 

Fernando VI., 1746 

Carlos III., 1759 

Carlos IV., 1788 

Ferdinand Vn., 1799 

Joseph Bonaparte, 1806 

Ferdinand VII. (reinstated) 1814 

Isabella II. (She was dethroned, 1868), 1843 

Alfonso XII., . 1874 

Alfonso XIII., . . . . ^. . . . 1885 



BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SPAIN, 



1. Ginn's "Ancient Atlas." 

2. Myers* "Ancient History." 

3. Myers' '* Mediaeval History." 

4. Gibbon's " Rome." 

5. Morris' *' The Beginnings of the Middle Ages." 

6. Brinton's '* Races and Peoples." 

7. Johnson's " Cyclopedia." 

8. " Encyclopaedia Britannica." 

9. Prescott's " Peru" and " Mexico," 

10. Prescott and Robertson's " Charles V." 

11. Prescott and Robertson's " Philip II." 

12. Motley's *' Dutch Republic." 

13. Hale's •' History of Spain." 

14. Lane-Poole's " Moors in Spain." 

15. Watt's " Recovery of Spain." 

16. Irving's " Conquest of Granada." 

17. Chart of Civilization, "Who, When, and What.' 



fOr 



MAR 11 1899 



